The Age of Lies
by The Divine Comedian
Summary: January 1981. Sirius is a paranoiac, Peter is not a psychopath, James is a dad, Remus is super angry, and Regulus… Regulus is alive. No-one is more surprised than him. AU, sort of fix-it, but dark enough. Sirius/Remus, too (mostly in the past).
1. Sirius

**Note:** This is the slightly more upbeat (for me) AU twin to Pot, Kettle, Black. It was supposed to be a light-hearted Christmas-y fix it, but then I remembered I don't do light-hearted, and now it's more of a serious January thing. Your feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated :)

 **Warnings** : violence, self-harm, some suicidal ideation

* * *

 **The Age of Lies 1/4**

* * *

 **Regulus, December 1979**

Regulus is fucked.

He's never known pain as crazy as this. This must be the apex, then, the summit, the peak, and he doesn't know what to do with it, except fall off the edge. It's not the wretched potion, or even the evil thing hidden beneath it. No, regret has been with him all the way uphill, for months before he first dipped a goblet beneath the potion's shimmering surface. All around him, faces of people he's terrorised, tortured, lured to their death, families he's torn apart, ideals he's betrayed, and the only thing, literally the only thing that's kept him upright and breathing and trudging on uphill is the knowledge that it is all going to be over today, that he'll find the peace he deserves, in the arms of the living dead, beneath the surface of a nameless lake.

Just a few more minutes, he tells himself, a negligible effort, a handful of goblets, and then he can rest. He counts out the heartbeats he has left, counts them down, and remembers, remembers, why now? He remembers his last Quidditch match against Gryffindor, Sirius whacks a bludger at him, all's fair in Quidditch, and he catches the Snitch by the tips of his fingers, at the end of the arm that is already marked.

And now Kreacher catches him, too, and this is not how it's supposed to go, Kreacher's not supposed to save him, he's supposed to let him sleep.

But he never did, there'd always been lessons in the morning, elocution and Occlumency and piano, and he's back in Grimmauld Place, and the locket tumbles to the ground, chimes like a death bell.

Like he's late for a lesson.

He's on the floor, sobbing like a child, like he first did six months ago, delicate nineteenth century Persian, a curse woven into each thread, Marlene McKinnon bleeding out on a nursery floor, and Kreacher comes, with water, with potions, with bandages, covers the horrible mess of his arm.

"I can't go back," he says, he pleads, the mark is crawling, twisting under his skin, lashing out, like a wounded animal, it is eating him alive, insides first, and Kreacher tucks him into bed like the child he is.

* * *

 **Sirius, January 1981**

It's all lies, lies, lies, all the time, lies and half-truths and what-ifs, but in the end, it's all lies. Sirius is in the middle of what used to be his kitchen, and he's lying to James, again, lying by telling the truth, he's quite proud of this one, "I'm worried about Moony," he says, and he waits and waits for James to suggest they go through Remus's things and maybe they'll finally have proof, one way or another, he can't breathe with all the lies.

But James is a fucking romantic, and he trusts everyone he shouldn't, even when they're gone all the time, and don't come back when they promised, and lie about where they've been.

And that's why Sirius makes tea, of all the fucking things to do, makes tea with Remus's Muggle kettle and Remus's Muggle PG Tips in Remus's chipped Muggle mugs and of course the half-pint of milk still left in Remus's Muggle fridge has gone off ages ago so they drink it black, and James is worried too, but in a wholesome way.

Sirius just wants to hit things.

Then, just then, because bad timing is the curse of his _life_ , because of course they still haven't gone through any of Remus's things unless the meagre contents of his tea cupboard count, there's the sound of a key in the door, and he and James are in the hall in two steps, mugs of tea in one hand, wands in the other. Extremely intimidating.

"What the hell are you doing here?" says Sirius.

Remus looks like shit. He's in his rattiest Muggle things, his tatty old man's deerskin overcoat – which Sirius secretly thinks is in _incredibly_ bad taste -, the washed-out jumper with the hood drawn up, jeans with plenty of holes in them, dirt-caked boots. And when was the last time Sirius has seen him surprised? Not today, that's for sure.

"I live here, you twat," Remus points out, regarding the pair of them with some sort of tired curiosity as his backpack hits the floor. "Unlike you, I might add."

"That's a shit security question, by the way, Padfoot," says James, then he catches up on the tension. He elbows his best friend. "You moved out? You never said!"

"I do that," says Sirius defensively. "Sometimes."

"Oh god," says James, who has long ago sworn not to let himself be dragged into any of this, whatever this is, lies and more lies stuck together with spellotape and not much hope. "Moony. Last thing we talked about."

"You said you'd asked Sirius to be godfather," says Remus, stiffly taking off his coat and letting it fall to the floor next to his backpack. "What did I reply?"

"Sure that's the question you want me to answer?" says James with a side glance at Sirius.

"Just get this over with, I need a bath," says Remus. He really does, thinks Sirius, who doesn't even need Padfoot to figure that one out.

Remus kicks the boots off his feet. His socks are ancient and they, too, are riddled with holes. When he pulls back his hood, his dark-blond hair is half sticking up, half plastered to his head. It's not exactly the most prefect-y of looks.

"Fine," says James, in a tone that says _Dig your own grave_. "You said if that's my choice of godfather, you hoped Harry has inherited Lily's brains."

" _What_?" splutters Sirius.

Remus grins. "Hello, James."

"How have you been?" says James at the same time as Sirius says, "What took you so long?"

"The two of you will have to coordinate a little," says Remus, as he brushes past Sirius into the tiny bathroom, where he gives the scary electric Muggle boiler contraption a few impatient waves with his wand. The thing hums to life, and releases lukewarm water into the tub in a thin stream.

"We thought you'd be back a week ago," says James, who pretends he hasn't seen this blatant display of Improper Use of Magic. _Before the moon_ , is what Sirius wants to add, but really, it's implied. It always is.

"Got held up," Remus says shortly. He waves his wand a few more times, and the water starts steaming.

"What happened?" says James.

Remus looks up to him, and now he looks positively impatient. "An ambush happened, that's what."

"Who –" begins Sirius at the same time as James says, "Are you okay?"

"I haven't had a bath in a _month_ ," says Remus. "Feel free to stick around if you're bored, but right now I have an appointment with a hectolitre of water. If you're cold, I'm sure Sirius remembers how to work the heating."

He marches past them to grab a towel and a set of marginally cleaner clothes from his bedroom, then adds, "I see you've helped yourselves to tea. If you're hungry, you'll find takeaway menus in the cutlery drawer."

He shuts the bathroom door in their faces.

"Is it just me or does he seem angry?" says James.

Sirius shrugs. _Angry_ is not the word he would use. Not when _furious_ , _withdrawn_ , and _deflective_ all present themselves.

They retreat into the kitchen, and James opens the cutlery drawer, flipping idly through Remus's collection of takeaway menus. "Curry or Chinese, what do you think?" he says.

"I think that was a joke," says Sirius absent-mindedly.

"Have you looked at him? He needs fattening up," says James, who, since the birth of his son, seems to have turned into his own mother. She, too, would be able to count someone's ribs through three layers of clothes. "And he's _hurt_ ," he adds.

"Curry," says Sirius, who has looked at Remus and only thought _traitor_ , but who also has extensive knowledge of his takeaway preferences, and doesn't James know this, right here, is the very conflict that is ripping him apart?

James seems to think this is something he needs to get out of his system, as if this was a misdirected crush, or a prank gone wrong. It's ridiculous. It's their _lives_ that are on the line.

"Look at me, you prat," says James sharply, and Sirius snaps out of his thoughts. "I'm not having any part of this. I'm getting curry, and if you think you'll feel better after looking through his things, now is probably your last chance for a while."

Menu in hand, James walks back to the hall, haphazardly puts his shoes on, takes his coat and woolly hat from the pile of the floor because of course Moony doesn't have normal grown-up things such as coat racks. Sirius follows him into the hall because this… this thing wants _out_ , and yet it doesn't, and he doesn't even know anymore.

"James," he whispers.

" _What_?"

"Don't you think he's gone a bit… _feral_?"

"Do you blame him?" says James. "He's not exactly warmly welcomed in our society."

"Then why should he be fighting for us?"

James looks at him and he couldn't roll his eyes any harder if he tried. "You're a bloody idiot, Black."

For the second time in as many minutes, a door is slammed in Sirius's face, and he resists the temptation to punch it.

 _All right_ , he thinks. The irritating thing is, James is right. If Sirius wants to have a snoop around, he should be doing it now, while James is out and Remus is busy scrubbing layers and layers of grime and who-knows-what off his skin.

Only he can't seem to get started.

The examiners at the Auror Office had been right, Sirius realises. He would have made a shit Auror, because what kind of Auror would freeze to the spot at the chance of finally finding out, for sure, if his best friend of nine years and ex-whatever they were is a traitor?

First things first. He gets on his knees, thankful for the sound of rushing water from the bathroom that drowns out whatever rustling he can't avoid. Remus's backpack, thrown carelessly in a corner of the hall, doesn't contain any surprises. In fact, it doesn't contain much of anything. Change of clothes, as ratty as the set he's worn, some Muggle money, maps, empty paper and a biro, half a bag of trail mix, an empty pack of cigarettes.

And a toothbrush, he's relieved to find.

No book, though. The Remus he's known wouldn't even have gone on a half-hour train ride without a book, let alone a month-long trip through the wilderness.

There are books a-plenty in his bedroom, which Sirius visits next. In fact, the bedroom is almost exactly like he remembers it. Books are stacked in haphazard piles, some lying open on their face, others with dog-ears and whatever Remus could find as bookmarks – rejected job applications, half-finished bars of cheap Muggle chocolate, socks – their margins covered in notes. This is someone who likes reading more than he likes owning pristine books.

But there's something oddly _past_ about it all. The books are all pushed to the wall and covered in a thin layer of dust. There's a box that says _Hogwarts_ on it, unopened in over two years, and the terrible thing is that Sirius _understands_ , somewhere in his black neglected heart, because what good is the finest education you could get in Great Britain to someone like Remus, who has given up on applying to jobs in the magical world at some point around the second summer.

There's Remus's terrible, back-destroying mattress on the floor, and some of the pettier parts of Sirius want to know if there have been others who'd complained about the mattress in the six weeks since he moved out of here. But there's no sign of strange boxers or bras, no wonder, Remus hasn't even been here for most of that time, and Sirius tells himself to focus.

What is he even looking for? A neat ring binder, like the ones Remus had at Hogwarts, full of notes in his sharp handwriting, entitled _Death Eater Diary_?

It's cosy, too, with candles on every bit of flat surface, mostly because Remus is regularly late on the electricity bill. Nothing is neat, but there's so little of everything, and he doesn't keep letters, or photos, or old notes, or newspapers. No sign, either, that Sirius has ever lived here, and somewhere deep inside Sirius knows that Remus is miles too clever to leave anything incriminating lying around in a flat that Sirius still has the key to. Remus will have it all in his head.

Or maybe it's all in Sirius's head. That's what James thinks, anyway.

Sirius knows what Dark Magic feels like, and there isn't a trace of it anywhere in the flat, and for a moment Sirius gives in, allows that glimpse of hope that has kept telling him, _it's not him, it's not him_.

But he's done the math. It can't be anyone else.

The sound of rushing water stops, and Sirius thinks _for fuck's sake, be a Gryffindor and ask_. He probably wouldn't have dared if he hadn't seen Remus's wand abandoned on top the fuse box in the hall, clear sign that the idiot still trusts _him_.

Remus freezes in the middle of pulling his shirt over his head when Sirius opens the bathroom door.

"For fuck's sake, Sirius," he says. "You fucking moved out, why do I still have to deal with you in my own bloody bathroom?"

" _Where have you been_?"

Remus takes a deep, measured breath, usually a sign that he is very deliberately not ripping someone's throat out.

"That's not how it works," he says. "You know the rules." But he seems a bit tired of the rules himself – or maybe just tired in general - and struggles free of his shirt completely before turning to the sink. He braces himself against the basin momentarily before turning to a cabinet full of bottles, passing over the pain potion in favour of Dittany and Essence of Murtlap.

Sirius has seen him in various shades of hurt before, of course, but not like this. Not tired, stooped, like his whole life his wearing him out. His skin is torn and bloody from the back of his neck to past his shoulder blade, and while Sirius can't see clearly in the dim bathroom light, it's nowhere near the wolf could easily reach with either teeth or claws. It probably hurts like fuck. His entire left side is bruised black and purple, and deep scratches run from his hipbones down to somewhere underneath his jeans.

Sirius has exactly two thoughts: One, that he knows exactly why Remus is ignoring the pain potion - because it makes him slow and sleepy, and he won't want to be slow and sleepy with Sirius in the flat. And two, that James is right.

Remus does need fattening up.

"Good fight?" Sirius asks.

Remus snorts. "You should see the other guy."

He soaks a clean flannel with Dittany and carefully dabs at his torn shoulder and back, twisting painfully to reach the edges. His right arm – and of course Sirius notices – is free of the Dark Mark, but does that mean anything? Fenrir Greyback isn't marked (Sirius knows because unfortunately the fucker disrobes at the drop of a hat, and at six feet four and an estimated two hundred and forty pounds of muscle, Sirius has to admit he is intimidating).

"Need help with that?"

Remus gives him a rather eloquent look in response. It says, quite clearly, that nothing is further from his mind than letting Sirius anywhere near his battered body, whether to help him, or to read his secrets from the new scars he's wearing, or to do whatever else Sirius can think of.

"Do you mind? I'm rather in the middle of something," Remus says, glancing meaningfully at the half-full, steaming bathtub, when Sirius is still standing in the bathroom door like an idiot.

"Hurry up," he says. "James is getting curry."

Sirius closes the bathroom door before Remus can reply. _Werewolves_ , he thinks. He should have bloody known.

* * *

James is arranging boxes of rice and three types of curry and pakora on the rickety kitchen table when Remus finally exits the bathroom, drying his hair vigorously with a towel. He's wearing a different one of his endless selection of hoodies, jeans, and a scarf around his neck. Sirius also notices the wand is back on his person.

There's a vaguely soapy, medicinal smell around Remus. It is orders of magnitude better than the previous smell.

"Oh, god," he says. "Food. I swear, James, if you weren't so bloody married, I would absolutely proposition you right now." He gratefully receives his heaped bowl of rice and curry.

It is super fucking awkward, at least for Sirius, because James is throwing him a look that says _are these the ways of a traitor_? And of course James couldn't bloody identify a traitor if he danced on his grave, as long as the traitor kisses his arse enough.

It takes Remus an estimated three minutes to get halfway through his curry, and Sirius can't help but think it would be _so_ easy to just slip him some Veritaserum, just stir it into a bowl of whatever food they can find, the man will eat it and then they'll finally get to the bottom of this, but the Death Eaters are controlling the Moondew supply, and the Order's stocks of Veritaserum are wiped clean.

James finally takes the initiative and asks.

"When you say you got held up before the moon –" he begins.

"Told you," says Remus between spoonfuls. "Ambush."

"Death Eaters?"

"Some," says Remus.

"Did they know where to find you?"

"That's the impression I got," says Remus, and Sirius wants to scream, because it's all evasion and half-truths and frustrating scraps of information again.

"How did you get away?" Sirius asks.

Remus takes a moment before he replies, but it still comes out sharp. "Does it fucking look like I got away?"

The obvious answer, of course, is no, thinks Sirius, because frankly, it looks like Remus was _let go_. "You're here now," he says.

"True," says Remus. "Should probably tell them." He reaches for a spiral notebook and a biro on the window sill. He scrawls a few words, and as his signature, a circle - standing in the for full moon. Remus crumples up the note and taps it with his wand, and the paper ball floats in the air before igniting. Then he returns to his curry.

"What was that? What did you write?" says Sirius.

Remus makes a tiny frustrated noise. "Just a note for Headquarter that I made it back safe."

"You didn't report to Headquarter yet?" says James. It's very, very unusual, because they have a code, and the code says they report to Headquarter after a mission. They don't go home and have a bath and Indian takeaway first.

"No," says Remus quietly.

"Remus," says James, in one of his wonderful imitations of being a responsible adult, "the Order relies on the information you bring home."

There's a moment of silence and then Remus slams his bowl on the table.

"And where was the fucking Order when I fucking sent for help?" he says. "Hanging around a tree somewhere? Getting tipsy on eggnog? Crying over your terrible life choices? Merry fucking Christmas, you comfortable wankers."

"You sent for help?" says James, looking about as dumbfounded as Sirius feels, because Remus's assumptions about their Christmas are not entirely inaccurate. The last week has been nothing if not extremely quiet, which is probably one of the reasons Sirius's brain has once again gone into overdrive about this whole traitor thing.

"Twice," says Remus. "Well, thanks for nothing. I'll give my report when I see fit." He rises abruptly, walks over to the window and opens it to the damp cold of early January. There, he settles down in the window frame and lights up a cigarette. Angrily.

He totally has that from Sirius.

"Sirius?" says James.

"Yeah." Sirius is surprised to find he's still dumbfounded. There's been maybe three times in his life that he's seen Remus _this_ angry, and to be quite fair, it's been his fault every time.

Not this time, though. He's fairly sure of that.

"Who was on communications duty for Headquarter this week?"

Sirius closes his eyes. "Caradoc," he says. "Caradoc and Peter." Neither of whom are anywhere close to the top of his list. "I suppose," he adds carefully, "the messages must have gone lost on the way."

If there have been any in the first place, he doesn't add.

"Twice," says Remus from the window.

"Let's maybe just check the records anyway," says James. Sirius nods.

There is, of course, an uncomfortable silence after that, but they're not really given the chance to get used to it, because the Muggle phone rings, once, twice.

Remus groans. "Sirius, get the phone."

"It's your flat," Sirius reminds him.

Remus flips him off, then extinguishes his cigarette in a long-dead flowerpot and picks up the phone.

"Of course it is – I _live_ here, for fuck's sake," says Remus into the phone. Then he listens for a moment. "He's here," he adds. "James is with him."

A long moment of quiet listening, and then, " _What_? I thought he was dead!" Remus looks at Sirius, and the expression on his face is absolutely unreadable.

"We'll be there in a second," says Remus. "Hang in there." As he hangs up, James and Sirius are already on their feet.

"Was that Lily?" says James at the same time as Sirius says, "Who's not dead?"

Remus, of course, addresses James. "The first thing she wants you to know," he says, "is that she has the situation entirely under control."

"And the second?"

"There's a Death Eater in your kitchen."

"What?" says James, at the same time as Sirius says, "Who?"

"Oh, Padfoot." Remus smiles without much humour. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Come on, we can Apparate from the fire escape."

As soon as he's turned his back, Sirius gives James a very, very imploring look, paired with a meaningful side glance at Remus, which is supposed to very clearly convey that he's not sure Remus should be coming with them, but of course bloody James ignores him and side-Apparates them both to the Potters' secret address in Cornwall, where Lily is leaning against the kitchen counter, two wands in one hand and telephone still in the other.

Sitting opposite her at the kitchen table is Regulus Black.

* * *

 _To be continued._

 _Next chapter: Peter! (And everyone's like 'Yaaaaay')_


	2. Peter

**Note:** This chapter is largely from Peter's perspective. In 1981, he's in full on traitor mode. He knows his friends' weaknesses, he knows their shortcomings, and he's not kind or forgiving about them. Hence, chapter-specific warnings for past child abuse, maladaptive coping, and disturbing revenge fantasies (all non-graphic). No offense meant to bicyclists or Arsenal fans – the author loves cycling and is fairly indifferent about football.

Thank you for your comments, as always, I'm very happy about feedback :)

* * *

 **The Age of Lies 2/4**

* * *

 **Regulus, December 1979**

But Regulus wakes, like the cursed cuckoo in the downstairs clock, he snaps open like a knife, and dawn is bleeding through the windows.

His hand, in his sleep, has grasped the locket, a sliver of the Dark Lord's soul, old and twisted and exquisitely crafted, and the locket grasps back, black tendrils creeping in the non-space between them, sniffing out the worst in him, to rouse and anger and inflame.

He _feels_ it, knows Dark Magic like the back of his eyelids. This is the darkest of all, raw, expanding, a sinister mushroom cloud rising from blood and centuries, and he knows what it wants – _him_ \- and he laughs in the face of it.

Because the Dark Lord himself had him for almost a year, and look how that one played out.

He's walked willingly into the Dark Lord's deadliest trap, and come out the other end, where it all began: His childhood bedroom, naked toes on soft carpet, steely grey of a late December dawn.

The thing in his hand knows that he'd crush it if he only knew how, and its black heart is fluttering between his fingers like it wants to flee. The Dark Lord only ever fled from death. And death is what Regulus is, what else could there be at the bottom of an underground lake: Death, and an impossible flight.

The irony is beautiful, and he is still fucked.

And that's before he even fucking acknowledges that the Mark is burning again, and he's being Summoned.

* * *

 **Peter, January 1981**

Peter Pettigrew is not a psychopath, not like Sirius is.

He's never woken up one morning and decided he's going to break the Marauders. He's never gone and thought, let's take this secret, this deadly truth, and turn it into something worse than a lie - a weapon, no, a joke, _no_ , a wild card in a silly school boy feud, all because it's a Tuesday and his family hates him.

And who can blame them? thinks Peter. Sirius Black is a bloody menace, a bipolar arsehole, an overbred lunatic. He's lucky that everyone who's ever met him bloody loves him, even his hateful family wanted him back after he ran away, and yet he seems intent to die before he's twenty-two, as a hero or by his own hand, one day he's going to kamikaze bomb himself into a Death Eater camp, then he can have both and fuck those who love him. Sirius Black will always have both, because he'll always have everything.

Everyone who's ever met Peter has been sort of indifferent about him. Well. Not long now.

It has taken Peter some time to understand this, outside the incestuous echo chamber of Gryffindor house, but Sirius Black had it coming, every bruise, every curse, every tirade his family has ever thrown at him, every choking nightmare, every red-eyed hangover, every miserable cigarette lit before dawn, every Boggart shaped like his Death Eater brother. He never deserved to run from his family, he deserved to be abandoned, left on the street, ignored, erased, forgotten. Or maybe hated, vilified, despised, yes, maybe that's better, thinks Peter, though Sirius'd probably enjoy the attention.

Maybe there's a way to achieve both.

Maybe Peter should just go back to fucking Yorkshire. He hasn't spent more than a month there since he left for Hogwarts, but he remembers his primary school years as soothingly _trivial_. Nothing that happened in Yorkshire – whether he had the brains for Maths, the patience for English, the coordination for P.E., whether he had direction, drive, or even friends - none of that mattered once the Hogwarts letter arrived. Even his accent has softened, or rather, aligned itself with his friends' – Berkshire, Welsh, fucking RP - though he still slips into it when he's stressed, like he can just return to Yorkshire, live like nothing is of consequence.

\- And that is exactly how Sirius Black operates _all the time_ , and that's why Peter will not go back to fucking Yorkshire. The Marauders were the best thing that has happened to Peter Pettigrew in his entire life, hands down, no competition, and Sirius went and tore it down on a whim, the entire intricate construction, the secrets they shared, the camaraderie, the

five-year-plus-three-months friendship, and even if they're all pretending it's still there, Peter can see nothing but fault lines. It'll take nothing, a wrong word, a splinter in their flesh, a strong gust of wind, and it'll crash down around them, and they'll be what they've always been: Alone. All because Sirius Black is one thing today and another tomorrow. Nothing he's part of will ever withstand time.

Peter Pettigrew is not a psychopath, and he's not a traitor. He's just cleaning up.

He pities Moony and James sometimes, who are as much victims of this as he is. But they've ignored it, no, they've neglected it, no, they've let it fester, _no_ , they've _excised_ it and then they _missed_ it and then implanted it _back_. He doesn't know what's worse:

That Moony'd gone and bought whatever excuses Sirius had dished up at the time, whispered in his ear during late nights away on the Astronomy Tower and everywhere else they went, two dots moving together on the Map, that Moony's fallen hard for the whole I'm-a-poor-rich-kid-and-my-parents-used-Unforgivables-on-me act, that he's not only forgiven Sirius to stave off the excuses, but is now actually sharing a flat with him, no, sharing a bedroom, no, sharing a _bed_ , aligned with him skin to skin and head to toe, inside and out. Sirius will always have everything, and now he has Moony, too, like it's a dare to him, another cliff to jump off of. It's making Peter queasy just to think about it, because their fit is so horribly seamless. That monstrous fool, that careless monster.

Frankly, as far as Peter is concerned, anyone who is that soft-hearted to the point of idiocy _deserves_ to be put down.

Or maybe it's James, who is his best friend, but Peter his not his. There'd been those glorious six months after The Prank when Peter'd thought he could step up into that void Sirius had left, that mythical space where Peter suddenly had a voice and an impact. He'd _thrived_ in that space. No wonder Sirius was going to want it back eventually, was going to snap right out of his half-year sulk and they'd push Peter aside without a thought for him, and of course James managed to twist even that bit of weak-hearted foolery into magnanimousness and bloody Gryffindor fairness, because _he's suffered enough,_ but has Peter?

He's never going to be at the wrong end of a one-sided friendship again.

Peter's perfectly aware that even that wretched wrong end has been his by James's graces, and he's paying it back now, morsel by pitiful morsel, day by fretful day that James gets to spend with his perfect little family, if you could call it that, schoolboy crush and a failed condom, a tragedy waiting to happen. And wait it will, patiently, until the Order is toppled, until Dumbledore stands there without allies, until they can strike. And Peter is the only one who knows how to get there: It's not the Order, and it's not Dumbledore, it's the Marauders that need to be picked clean, erased off the Map, because together, they could always achieve anything.

Peter is not a psychopath, and he's not a traitor, but he refuses to be a bystander, either. The Marauders are history, and they have been since Sixth Year.

Shame about the baby, though.

* * *

Peter has spent the last eight days in unwilling symbiosis with Caradoc Dearborn, and he is about to turn violent.

Caradoc isn't _all_ bad – the man is smart, but not gifted, and he has, thankfully, absolutely no sense of humour. He's the type of person that makes Peter wonder if he should ever have bothered finding some different friends at Hogwarts, friends that didn't play stupid Quidditch, didn't give a hoot for pranks, and couldn't care less why their dorm-mate looked like he picked a fight with a mid-sized pub full of Arsenal fans every month. But keeping secrets in the paranoid, triple-checking environment that is the Order nowadays is a pain in the arse, even without even a moderately smart person all up in his personal space.

Besides, Caradoc is the sort of fucking weirdo who makes a point of drinking a gallon of water a day. He brings in raw vegetables and crunch-chews them for lunch, and not only that, he is pushy about sharing his wrinkly radishes and cubed parsnips, and his record for talking about his bicycle, no, bicycles, plural, which include a fucking recumbent bike, is two hours, six minutes.

Could be worse, probably. Could be busy. Of course, things up here in the Order's communication room are never busy when Remus is out on one of his secret missions, that's the point. Vance's Patronus came in the other day, informing them the Death Eaters were spray-painting Westminster Bridge with steel-eating poison; they'd sent on the Prewetts to check it out. That was been by far the most original incident, the rest has been safe notes, sick notes, unconfirmed Death Eater sightings. Bread and butter of vigilante life.

"Lupin's overdue," says Caradoc at one point between his second turnip and fourth carrot, and that's exactly what's ticking Peter off about him, this constant effortless stating the obvious thing he has going on.

"No news yet," says Peter. "I'm sure he was just held up." That last part is not even a lie.

The first of Remus's messages came over a week ago. Fortunately, Caradoc had stepped out at the time – gallon of water a day, remember – and Peter had been able to incinerate it right away. The second message came on Christmas day, looking a tad more urgent. Remus's handwriting always deteriorated when he was stressed. Caradoc had almost wet himself with excitement.

Peter had read it and thought, _Werewolves. No national insurance, no gas bills, no graves, no traces. A year from now, no-one will even remember them_. A second later, neither did Caradoc.

"He's a week late," says Caradoc now. "Could have sent an update, at least. I thought you said he was such a stickler at school."

"Deep cover," says Peter, with a shrug. "I'm sure there's a good reason for all the secrecy. Besides, Dumbledore trusts him."

And thus, with a twist of his tongue, he turns a matter of carelessness into a question of trust. _Words_ , Peter thinks, _the original wandless magic_. Caradoc won't even know where he got it from.

Inwardly, Peter is sweating. He hasn't really worried about Moony – after all, he's the one who arranged for Moony to be the sole survivor of this thing -, but he's starting to. Peter has a whole, intricate plan for Remus Lupin, but now the moon has come and gone, and the idiot still isn't back. If he has managed to get himself killed despite their best efforts to spare him -

Oh no. Caradoc is wearing his stating-the-obvious face again. "Christmas was quiet," he remarks cheerfully. "If today's the same, we'll have gone an entire week without losing someone."

Is it any wonder Peter has half a mind to poison the man with a mince pie?

Not that Caradoc would eat it. It'd probably interfere with his _macros_.

After that sorry attempt at a conversation starter, he carefully runs out of platitudes. Instead, Caradoc digs out some sort of magazine about Marathon running – he has got to be doing this on purpose, no-one is _that_ consistently annoying - and Peter distracts himself from strangling the man by doing the thing he does best.

Scheming. Thinking. Turning thoughts.

This is how Peter Pettigrew agglutinates _wants_ and _needs_ into actual _plans_ : By turning them over and over until he can see the sticky strands that tie them together. And then he turns them again until he knows all his plans from heart. Keeps him from panicking: He always knows what comes next.

Moony is his most complex plan yet. He needs to take the fall, the crucial _first_ fall, but he'll need to fall slowly. Peter had thought Remus being a Werewolf would help. Turns out he's such a natural goal for mistrust Peter occasionally has to steer things the other way. His repertoire is whispers, words, jokes, the rearranged truth. Let the Order clutch their pearls around him, as long as they pity him, too. Then maybe he'll last for as long as he's needed.

Actually, Peter will never fucking work with Werewolves again. They are far too vulnerable. The present-day Ministry isn't squeamish when it comes to Dark Creatures, and the slightest oversteer could make this intricate plan go up in premature smoke: They'll behead him with a silver axe, or just shoot him at dawn, hands tied behind his back and his heart marked with an X. Yet Moony insists on operating on the very fringe of the Order's already dubious legality. Peter can't wait until all that is dealt with.

Of course, the Dark Lord provides his own deaths for those who will not join him. Poison if there's time, turns all the iron in their blood to silver. Hanging if there's none, silver wire and willow trees. Poetry. Or just leave them at Greyback's mercy.

Peter has no bone to pick with Moony. But a plan as inescapable as this would be a shame not to implement.

Peter looks up when he hears the air crackle. Above their heads, a small fiery sphere flashes into existence, and a note flutters down on Caradoc's desk. A smile erupts on his stupid face.

"It's Lupin," he says, passing the note over. "Says he's home safe."

Peter breathes an audible sigh of relief. " _Now_ it feels like Christmas," he says, and manages not to cringe too visibly.

Caradoc files the note away by tucking it into their multidimensional cabinet. Then he says, casually, "Of course, he should have reported to Headquarters in person before going home."

Peter stills, lets the silence stretch on just long enough to allow for that thought to solidify in Caradoc's mind.

"Can't you cut him a little slack?" he says finally. "He's probably just exhausted. You know his missions, they go on forever."

"Sorry, Pete," says Caradoc, now sounding decided. "I know he's your mate, but I'll have to write him up."

Peter admittedly has an uneasy feeling about all of this himself. Because Remus, yes, has always been a stickler. Returning late without notifying anyone, and then going straight home without reporting… Granted, the former is probably because Remus is too injured to Apparate far and, as usual, too skint to take a train. The latter - well, he supposes Remus has reason to be ticked off with the Order. But if Moony's going to be bend the rules now, then Peter will have to know how far.

Because Moony has always been the clever one.

"You know what," says Peter, "you're right, he's my mate. He's been gone for over a month, who knows what shape he's in."

"He did say he's _safe_ ," Caradoc points out, who, bless him, is sporting a somewhat apologetic expression.

"Yeah, but you know him, he's not very open with these things," says Peter. Another one in the bag. "Tell you what, I'm off in an hour or so, let me just go and talk to him first. See if he has his reason. You can always write him up tomorrow, yeah?"

It's not like writing up is a serious affair, it's just that Remus will get a talking to from Mad-Eye Moody, who sometimes thinks he runs the Order. Unfortunately, Moody is very clever, too.

Caradoc shrugs, obviously relieved, but then, his portrait is in the dictionary next to 'conflict avoidance'. "Sounds reasonable," he says, and Peter gives him a watery smile.

An hour later, Peter Apparates to the fire escape just outside Remus's flat.

He peers in from the landing. The kitchen light is on, but a quick _Homenum Revelio_ tells him the flat is deserted, so he lets himself in. Peter knows that flat like the back of his hand – he's helped carrying that effing sofa up the stairs, and boxes upon boxes full of books, he's had about a hundred takeaway pizzas here and he doesn't even want to count how many gin and tonics, and last November, he's spent six hours drawing sinister-looking runes into the margins of Remus's books. A glance into Remus's dusty bedroom, where the stacks of books lie undisturbed, tells him that his handiwork has so far not been appreciated.

But Remus has been here, and he hasn't been alone. His ratty backpack is on the hallway floor, the bathroom is damp like he's taken a bath, and there's mugs of cold tea and half-finished curry for three on the kitchen table.

Everything is odd, and Peter can't seem to put a finger on it until he can – the flat is unlived-in, the fridge is empty except for a carton of milk that went off a month ago, the bed is made, but with a thin layer of dust on it, things are missing that he _remembers_ carrying up the stairs, no record player, no motorbike gear, and there's a suspicious absence of chaos...

Sirius has moved out.

Or in other words, a major player in their plans has changed residence, and they haven't noticed. Oh, _fuck_. He's going to be crucified. Worse, he's going to need a new plan, one that doesn't depend on Sirius making a critical mistake after Moony goes down, because clearly their love is not as blind as he'd hoped.

Since Peter's here anyway, he checks the Muggle telephone – a quick _Diffindo_ removes the bottom part, and a small square recording device falls out. Zero per cent magic, a hundred per cent Cold War. At least until he taps it with his wand to start the playback.

The tinny voice coming out of the device is Lily's. _Remus? Is that you?_

 _Of course it is - I live here, for fuck's sake,_ comes Remus's reply – it's hard to tell with the audio quality, or lack thereof, but his tone is full of undercurrents. Impatience. No, annoyance. No, _pain_.

 _Is Sirius with you?_ Lily sounds like she has picked up on the same thing, but decides to plough onwards regardless. It sounds urgent.

 _He's here. James is with him_. And if that doesn't prove Remus would be an absolutely shit spy, Peter doesn't know what would. No code names, no evasive manoeuvres, nothing. Amateur.

 _Boy, do I have a surprise for him. Guess who's sitting in my kitchen._

Peter listens to the rest of the conversation, and in the span of not even a minute, he can _see_ all his plans - so many houses of cards, finely balanced and sky-high – crumbling, no, collapsing, no, burning the fuck down, incinerated by Regulus fucking Black, of all people, that soft-spoken, blank-faced aristocrat with a Cruciatus like a tickling charm, that sickly clever cellar child hiding behind a mask and a fake public death. Figures that Sirius's antithesis would turn out equally insufferable.

There's no plan, but there's urgency. Can't blame silly old Peter if he panics after all.

He Apparates on the cobbled street in front of James's and Lily's safe house in quaint fucking Cornwall, turns rat mid-run to sneak past their many clever wards, slips in through the cat flap, turns back immediately while swearing to himself he will poison the bloody cat next chance he gets, thunders on to the kitchen with more noise than he'd have cared for, and fires the Killing Curse at the nearest Black he can see.

* * *

 _To be continued._

 _Next chapter: James!_


	3. James

**Note** : Thank you guys so much for your lovely comments (here and on AO3)! I was very thrilled to read them, to the point where I actually experienced a spot of performance anxiety, haha. I kept thinking things like, _I have no business writing James! Writing James is hard! Why did I ever think it was a good idea to put six people and a cat in the same kitchen? Blimey, did these characters always veer off-topic so quickly and thoroughly? (Wand jokes, I am looking at you!) And just because they all live in their own version of reality, do they have to act like such idiots?_ But, you know, they're Marauders, they don't need an excuse.

Well, here is the (long-winded) result of me clubbing down my self-doubts. Your feedback is, as always, very appreciated!

(The river crossing problem James is referencing is a real thing by the way, though I am not sure if it's widely known across the planet.)

* * *

 **The Age of Lies 3/4**

* * *

 **Regulus, December 1979**

The pain has been with him for so long now that he doesn't notice the Summon until he does. But the Mark is burning, and doesn't that lend a note of urgency to this entire idiotic situation: Regulus Black, heir of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, recently defected Death Eater, standing barefoot in his childhood bedroom, clutching a locket. Whatever he decides to do, he ought to decide fast.

Fortunately, the choice is simple.

The Order won't have him. With what he's done – and the entire gravity of it is permanently etched in his brain, the Dark Lord's own nightmare potion has seen to that – it's either a lifetime in Azkaban, or – well, no life at all.

He wonders what that's like, having no soul left to suffer.

Maybe the locket can save him, maybe a splintered piece of the Dark Lord's soul will weigh up his sins, tip the scales in his favour, but he has a feeling a confrontation with the Order will end with him being Stunned well before he can launch into a long-winded lecture on Horcruxes.

The Death Eaters, on the other hand, are looking for him, and he'd better have a damn good explanation ready for why's he's been gone for three days, for why his arm is cut up like a sacrificial lamb, and – a slight uptick in the pain reminds him - why he's ignoring the Summon right now.

The choice is simple. Regulus wishes it weren't.

"Kreacher," he says into the silence, and the house-elf appears by his side.

"Yes, Master Regulus," says Kreacher.

"I'm pretty much fucked," Regulus informs him.

Kreacher is silent for a moment. Then he says, "The Mistress would appreciate if Master Regulus watched his language, Kreacher is sure."

"I'm pretty much fucked and it's your fault," says Regulus. "I gave you clear orders."

Large innocent eyes regard him. "Kreacher apologises from the depths of his heart for saving Master Regulus from the Inferi."

"…You're very pleased with yourself, aren't you, Kreacher," says Regulus.

The house-elf gives a twitch that might be a shrug, if such an undignified gesture were part of his repertoire. "Mistress gave Kreacher clear orders, too. To watch after Master Regulus always."

 _Ah_ , thinks Regulus. "When?"

The lengthy pause that follows is almost incompatible with the centuries old house-elf code. "In 1971, Master," says Kreacher finally.

"So, in other words, when Sirius was sorted into Gryffindor?"

"Around that time, yes, Master."

Of course, Kreacher has always been king of loopholes, Regulus thinks. He should have bloody known.

"Kreacher?" says Regulus.

The house-elf bows his head. "Yes, Master?"

The mutilated Mark burns like a bonfire. "I'll have my usual breakfast," he says.

He's absolutely stalling, of course. But this is just fifteen minutes. Just one more thing to lie about, and at least – he thinks with a new-found rebelliousness that is not much older than three days - he won't have to face the Dark Lord before he's had his coffee.

Because the choice really is that simple. He has to go back if he wants to survive. He has to go back, or they will find him, and they will do away with him, and the Dark Lord will be truly immortal. He has to go back and lie, lie, lie.

He has to go back. His mind repeats it like a mantra. In fact, his mind is the _opposite_ of empty, and even after the day he's regrettably had, Regulus is still surprised how this sort of turmoil can just sneak up on him. He usually has better control than this.

Perhaps best to cram in some last-minute Occlumency over his soft-boiled egg.

Just before he empties his mind of all emotion, stirring a scalding cup of coffee, Regulus realises this is how Sirius must have felt half the time. He, too, could turn simple acts of existence into defiance, flying high on adrenaline, because, he'd tell you with a smirk, what's the worst that could happen?

Regulus has an idea now.

The Dark Lord's Summon grows stronger. Regulus cracks his egg with a spoon. Who's a Gryffindor now?

* * *

 **James, January 1981**

James is the first to admit he is not always in tune with his own emotions, but even he notices, somewhere in the more observant regions of his brain, that this is probably an emotional moment.

Panic is an emotion, right?

Even under the best of circumstances, the minute or so post-Apparition is not particularly conductive to critical thinking. These are not the best of circumstances. James has literally just arrived home, Padfoot and Moony in tow, and the kitchen has somehow gained one (1) Death Eater while he was away, and he is _not_ prepared for this.

James is by his wife in a heartbeat and she looks at him like _he's_ the one having histrionics, but Sirius definitely has him beaten on that front because he actually jumps over a chair to slam their visitor against the wall, Lily shouts, "He's unarmed!", Remus moves inconspicuously into the only line of escape and where does he have _that_ from, everyone has their wands raised and the air _crackles_ with potential magic –

\- and then the entire thing just freezes, as if everyone's frontal cortex has called for a time-out at the same time. Seems like even Sirius is not completely stuck in trigger-happy Sixth Year anymore.

"Pardon?" says Sirius after a moment, like he has to physically dislodge the beam of his considerable attention from the man he's restraining.

"I said he's unarmed," says Lily, underlining her words by waggling a second wand in her hand. "Would it kill you not to overreact for once in your life, Sirius Black?"

Sirius looks like he is considering the question from all sides. "If anything, I'm underreacting," he says finally, and while that's decidedly not his usual modus operandi, James can't entirely disagree: If there is ever an appropriate reaction to seeing your dead Death Eater brother in your best friend's kitchen, Sirius's is probably not too far off the mark.

Then James's own brain finally catches up with him. "Stop, stop, stop!" he hears himself shout. "Priorities! Before we all have kittens over the Death Eater in our kitchen, _where the fuck is Harry_?"

"Safe," says Lily. "I put him to bed half an hour ago, before Mr Volé-de-mort here sauntered in."

James doesn't have the patience for clever French right now, even if it's from his beloved wife. " _Safe_?" he says. "What if he brought _friends_? What if he –"

"The wards are holding, they'll alert us with plenty of time to spare," says Lily. "What was I supposed to do, kill him on sight?"

James fights down an impulse to throw up his hands. "If the wards are up, what's he even doing in here? Shouldn't he be outside in the bear pit?"

Lily gives him a look that says, _It's not a bear pit, it's an extremely sophisticated high-density magical current sink._

Out loud she says, "Well, excuse me, he bloody looked like Sirius from afar," – at this, Sirius huffs audibly, "and he got the security question right. Once he was inside, I thought it best to keep him here. You know, where I can see him."

There's a certain amount of logic in there, James has to concede.

In any case, the rant seems to have piqued Sirius's interest. "What did you ask him, Lily?" he says.

"Is that really bloody important right now –" Lily starts.

"It probably is," says James. "We need to refine our security questions, Moody always says they're not targeted enough -"

" _Right now_?" repeats Lily.

James doesn't want to sound petty, but he has to point it out. "You did just let in a _Death Eate_ r, babe."

"All right, all right," says Lily with an eye-roll that, incidentally, tells him all about how her day with a sniffling baby went.

"I asked him the size of Sirius's wand," she says. " _What_? That thing is ridiculous, it's not like anyone's going to offer _fourteen bloody inches_ as a guess…"

"Let me get this straight," says James. "You saw a dark figure at the other end of the lawn, and your first instinct was to shout, 'Hey Sirius, what size is your wand?'?"

Sirius is still looking murderous, but from the slight twitching in his shoulders, James can tell his best friend is _also_ cracking up inside. He can be a bit of an emotional multitasker at times.

"Better than some of your questions," Lily shoots back. "At least I only asked for the _size_ of his wand, I didn't ask how many times in a row he could polish it –"

"Let's just return to the topic at hand, shall we," says Remus levelly. "I think we're confusing the Death Eater."

At the sound of his voice, Sirius stills, like he's forgotten Remus is there. He turns to catch James's eyes.

In seven years of Hogwarts, James has heard an imaginative variety of rumours about himself and his best friend, only a subset of which even Sirius dared repeating in his Best Man's speech. One of those is that they can read each other's minds, and it's clearly bollocks.

What they _can_ read is each other's expressions and tones and moods. Right now it looks like Sirius is thinking about a million things per second. But the underlying question is crystal-clear to James, who, much to his annoyance, has been forced to Sirius's spy-related moaning for the past week. _Do we really need a potential Death Eater and a potential spy in the same kitchen?_

But just because he's in tune with his best friend doesn't mean he has to agree. _Tough luck, you paranoiac, it's my kitchen_ , thinks James, and hopes it comes across somewhere on his face. He has more pressing issues to fret about. "Death Eaters are not supposed to just _saunter in,_ Lily," he says. "He's not even supposed to -"

"Know where you live?" says the young man still in Sirius's hold. He doesn't look like he's been doing any sauntering lately, not when words like running, fleeing, or skittering present themselves. There's a hunted look in his eyes that reminds him of no-one more than Peter, he's paler than Sirius after a Christmas with his family, and he holds himself the same way Remus does after the moon. Like he got used to pain a long time ago.

"Only the Order knows," says James.

The visitor snorts. "Consider it an open secret," he says.

"See, James, I _told_ you –" begins Sirius, as if they hadn't literally just had that argument.

"No time for that," says Remus, who James is almost entirely sure is _not_ the spy but privately thinks could try harder not to give that impression. "How can we know it's Regulus?"

"Does it _matter_?" exclaims Sirius. "Either way, he's a Death Eater. Let's just alert the Aurors, get this over with."

"I _am_ an Auror, you twat –" James starts.

"Auror-in-training," Sirius points out. "Who _dropped out_ –"

" _Enough_!" shouts Lily. "Sirius, you know I love you like a delinquent cousin, but I'm going to have to exclude you from the decision making process for a moment."

She crosses her arms. "Now listen, my favourite idiots," she says. "I checked this man for concealments and glamour charms, and cast a Finite just in case. If it's Polyjuice, it'll wear off in –" she checks her watch – "twenty-five minutes at the latest, because I've watched him like a literal hawk since he got here. And if I may just point out that, if the goal is to gain our trust, Polyjuicing into Regulus is a bit of an odd choice."

"Legilimency?" suggests James.

"Don't bother," says Lily. "Occlumency like a brick wall."

"Ask him something only Regulus would know, Padfoot," says James, going for the blunter instruments in their repertoire.

"Sure," says Sirius. "Soon as I have thought of a secret Regulus would have kept from his Death Eaters pals."

Regulus has been looking around the room almost bored, but now that expression is wiped from his face. "I never betrayed our family's secrets –"

"Not too proud of them, are we?" Sirius snaps back. He's still crowding the man who looks like his brother, pinning him to the wall with his left hand. He stretches out his right towards Lily.

"His wand, Lily," Sirius adds, and Lily passes it over.

Even the wand looks posh, thinks James. A dark reddish brown, likely rosewood or mahogany, polished and gleaming. James isn't one for wand-based personality assessment – that's something he associates with seventh-year Hufflepuffs and _Witch Weekly_ articles – but this one has a straight, fairly inflexible look. Nothing like the crooked twigs the Death Eaters are usually wielding.

Sirius weighs it in his hand. "This is my brother's wand," he says thoughtfully. "Where'd _you_ get it?"

"Ollivander's, of course," says Regulus. "I was seven. You were there, and you laughed for three weeks because yours was bigger."

"Oh, for the love of –" starts James.

"Wait a minute," says Lily. "That is _so_ illegal. Why would Ollivander sell a wand to someone that blatantly underage?"

"Welcome to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, where the law doesn't count and the rules are made up," says Sirius distractedly. "Of course," he looks up from the wand, "it would normally be buried with its owner."

"And if the owner had ever been buried," says Regulus, "I expect it would."

"I got a letter. From _Mother_ ," says Sirius with narrowed eyes. "Are you saying she just stuck his head with the rest of the house-elves?"

The Regulus James used to know – well, used to barely know – would have gone off at this provocation. This one doesn't. "Mother gets confused sometimes," says Regulus.

There's a thin smile on Sirius's face. "Very good," he says. "If there's one thing I could believe, it's the old Black insanity finally catching up with Mother. So, who are you, then?"

James can't tell if Sirius is struck by inspiration, or just struck altogether. Sirius's hand, the one holding the borrowed wand, twitches almost imperceptibly to cast a silent _Expecto Patronum_ , and James is wondering for a moment what memory he is pulling up for that.

(Sirius usually claims it's the memory of the letter notifying him of his father's death. It seems so wildly inappropriate it just might be true.)

The borrowed wand works perfectly for Sirius: The silvery dog is fully corporeal - not the silvery mist from when they started learning the spell, not the overexcited puppy from when Sirius first mastered it, but the spitting image of his Animagus form. The dog sniffs out both of them, before happily sitting down at Regulus's feet, wagging its tail.

He feels his wife bopping him excitedly, and James tries to catch Remus's eyes, because Remus is their Defence expert and James wants to know if this _means_ something. But Remus is merely watching the pair, his expression stony, and James remembers that Moony is probably still cross with everyone for thinking he's a traitor.

If James weren't convinced he'd make everything worse by pointing out it's just Sirius who thinks that, he probably would.

He can't catch Sirius's eyes, either. His best friend looks pensive, though. His grip on the other man relaxes somewhat.

"Let me see?" Sirius says.

Regulus hesitates for a long moment, then offers up his left arm. Very slowly, as if turning over a dead animal, Sirius reaches for it, and draws up the sleeve. Regulus lets him.

James cranes his head, not even trying to hide his curiosity. He has seen the Dark Mark before, but only from afar. Those who have seen it up close say it looks painful, and slippery, and _moving_ , with a mind of its own. And it _does_.

But James hasn't expected it to look so… mutilated. The Mark has been almost hacked into pieces, deep, angry slashes dividing splotches of ink. The cuts _look_ old. But they're not healed. Not in the slightest. And worse, they look _real_ , in the bodily, painful sense of the word. The tattooed snake wreathes and wriggles in the tight spaces between the cuts, the way James is fairly sure it _wouldn't_ if this were just a glamour or illusion.

Sirius whistles through his teeth. "What, in the name of Voldemort's mouldy underpants, is _that_?" he says.

Regulus closes his eyes for a moment, exasperated. "What does it look like?" he says. "It's a blood sacrifice, moron."

"Listen, you little shit –" begins Sirius.

"Guys, _calm down_ ," says someone, and James is startled when he realises it's him. Damn it, being a dad is really getting to him. Five months and he already has the voice down.

Both brothers catch themselves in the middle of a blossoming quarrel they have slipped into easily, like time hasn't passed at all, and now they look up as if they're half-expecting their parents to step into the room.

And hasn't _that_ always brought them closer together.

"Hello, brother," says Sirius softly. "I thought you were dead." He lets go of Regulus, who continues to lean against the wall, betraying some unnameable exhaustion.

"Hello," says Regulus. "I thought I was, too."

James had been wrong: _Now_ it's an emotional moment.

Conflict is an emotion, right?

"What happened?" says Sirius. "With… that?" He gestures towards Regulus's arm.

Regulus is carefully weighing his words before dispensing them. "The Dark Lord made a door, and he demanded a blood sacrifice to pass through," he says. "He got it."

"I can see that," says Sirius. "Did you have to sacrifice it quite so… enthusiastically?" He sounds worried, which is, naturally, a tone his brother would reject.

Regulus shrugs. "It used to be worse," he says. "Cousin Bellatrix healed it. Well. Healed it a bit. She does get distracted."

"Cousin Bella –" starts Sirius. _Conflict_ doesn't even begin to describe what James is reading in his face right now. "Bloody hell, what did you even tell them?" he says, flailing slightly. "Like, how did that happen? I bet they asked what happened. _I_ would. If I were the type of megalomaniac who had his mark tattooed on his followers."

"Oh, I blamed you, of course," says Regulus lightly. "You lot held me for three days until I faked my death and fled."

Sirius closes his eyes. "Of course you did," he says. "And here I was wondering why Voldemort hated us so."

"I was a little pressed for time, and you know how the Dark Lord can be," says Regulus, shrugging. "I wasn't going to tell him the truth, was I?"

"Truth," says Sirius, like he's handling a strange artefact that no-one has seen in a long time. "Are you going to tell me?"

Regulus sighs. "Depends," he says, and looks his brother straight in the eye. "Will you listen?"

Sirius doesn't say anything for a long while. His Patronus, unnoticed by both of them, is fading, reminding James of nothing so much as the Cheshire Cat. The last thing to go is the wagging tail.

"Yes," says someone else. It is, surprisingly, Remus, who has kept well out of the conversation for a long time. "Yes, he'll bloody well listen. And you – you'll bloody well talk. You two have been given the second chance of a lifetime, so try not to fuck this one up, too."

Sirius looks over at Remus, as if to protest, but recoils. Remus has drawn himself up to his full height, all six feet two of him and that's if one doesn't count his hair, and frankly, James _has_ to count his hair, the way it's all still sticking up because all in all, a very short time has passed since Remus emerged angrily from his bathroom towelling it to some semblance of dry, and right now Remus just conveys a strong impression of _Don't you think I'm done with you_. Frankly, he looks like he did the morning after The Prank, and knowing him, it's probably on purpose.

James is ninety-nine per cent sure Remus is _not_ the spy, and it's good enough for him. But he knows Sirius, and his best friend will never accept anything less than a hundred. It's how he's wired, somewhere deep in his brain: All or nothing, black or white. James has spent a week listening to this, and he doesn't know if it's just Sirius's own brand of megalomania, or if it's a very special kind of self-hatred. But Sirius thinks it's The Prank that somehow set all this in motion. In some ways, James has to agree. The Prank has rocked them, reset them. In a way, it has made them stronger. Even little Peter has lost most of his softness in the aftermath.

After a lot of deliberation within this very short time frame, Sirius turns back to his brother.

"You defected, then?" he says conversationally.

"Bit slow on the uptake, are we?" says Regulus. "I defected a year ago."

"Huh," says Sirius. "Could have called."

Regulus shrugs. "Busy."

There's a very long pause. Then Sirius slumps against the wall, next to his brother, but at a safe distance. "I wish I could believe you," he says to no-one in particular. "I wish I could believe any of this."

"Well, if you'd let me get in a word before succumbing to group paranoia," says Regulus, "I believe I can help with that."

"Paranoia -?" says Sirius. His voice sounds light, but the too long pause betrays him. "Do you have any idea what the Death Eaters have _done_ to us?"

"Yes," says Regulus simply. "But that's nothing – _nothing_ – compared to what they haven't done yet."

He moves to get something out of his coat pocket, but his hand freezes midway when four wands are pointed at him. He raises his hands in surrender.

"Let me," says Sirius, and reaches over into Regulus's pocket like he's sticking his hand into a cage full of wild doxies: With a little bit too much enthusiasm. He pulls out a small vial, containing a colourless fluid.

 _Oh, really_? Call him jaded, but in James's experience, perfect solutions to all their problems don't just present themselves.

"Is that –" says Sirius, with about the same amount of conviction.

"Yes," says Regulus.

"I'm assuming the Death Eaters left their own supply stream intact?" says Sirius.

"…You're not exactly fighting amateurs here, Sirius," says Regulus.

"Yeah, let us be the judge of that. Lily," says Sirius, handing the vial to her. "You're the Potions expert. Can you confirm this is Veritaserum?"

Lily holds the vial in her hands in that reverend way she holds very few things. Harry is one of them. "Twenty minutes in the lab," says Lily. "James, you'll have to entertain in the meantime."

"Sure," says James. "I'll make tea, shall I."

Brilliant, he thinks. Half his guests are already paranoid of being poisoned by the other half. Perfect time for a cuppa. Since the only alternative seems to be standing around in uncomfortable silence with the rest of the morons, he gets a brew on anyway. Damn, this kitchen is crowded, he thinks as he politely steps around Regulus Black for the third time.

And then they all wait around a pot of tea that no-one wants to drink. Bloody figures.

The general air of awkwardness is made even worse by the fact that Sirius is trying to catch his eyes, like he wants to talk to James in private but can't.

The whole situation reminds James of a logic puzzle he heard once, something about a wizard who wanted to cross a river with his goat and lettuce and baby Hungarian Horntail and sentient hat and bag of magic beans, and the goat was going to eat the lettuce if left alone with it, and the dragon was going to conspire with the hat to eat the wizard, and the boat was only big enough for one and a half people and the wizard wasn't allowed to Splinch himself. Something like that.

So, James ponders. Sirius doesn't want to leave Remus and Regulus alone in a room, whether to team up or to assassinate each other. Remus, of course, looks like he belongs in a bed with a hot water bottle and a mountain of chocolate, but Sirius will likely get the vapours if James lets Remus out of their sight now. James, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to lock Remus and Sirius in the bathroom until they've found a way to put everyone else out of their misery, but isn't too wild about spending time alone with Sirius's slightly unhinged brother. And Lily, of course, is busy doing actual magic, and would probably flip him off if he asked her to play babysitter while he and Sirius had a much-needed chat. They'll just have to keep everyone in their overcrowded kitchen.

"This is bullshit," says Sirius at some point. "Veritaserum can be fooled. You can lie with technicalities. You can lie if you don't know better -"

" _Someone_ listened to Mother's lessons," says Regulus with a slight smile. "I should probably know better than to quote her at you, but it's all a matter of - "

"Asking the right questions. I know."

"I'm so telling her you listened," says Regulus.

"Chucking you into Azkaban is an option I haven't discarded yet, you know," says Sirius.

If there has been levity for a moment, it is gone in an instant. "I understand," says Regulus quietly.

James knows his best friend enough to know that this is exactly the sort of silence he cannot stand: The silence after a joke gone wrong. That's why he fills it.

"What do you have to offer, then?" Sirius says. "I know you were not just going to appeal to our debatable brotherly bond, were you? You've got something you think we want, in exchange for your life."

"No, not my life," says Regulus almost tonelessly. "Not my life, my reputation, or liberty. All I wish for is to see him brought down."

" _Why_?" says Sirius.

Regulus makes a gesture that conveys exactly nothing, except how overwhelmingly out of scope the answer to this question is. "Because he _needs_ to be brought down," he says simply. "And _I know how_."

At that, there is silence.

Then Sirius snorts. "So do we," he says. "A well-aimed curse –"

"No, I mean it," says Regulus. "He's taken… precautions."

"Against capture? Don't we all?"

"Against _dying_ ," says Regulus, a hint of impatience in his voice. "Well, against staying dead," he clarifies, as if that, well, clarifies anything. "I'm the only one who knows how to get past them."

Sirius stares at him for a long moment. Then he throws his head back and _laughs_.

"You're pretty much fucked, aren't you?" he says, when he finally catches his breath.

Regulus's expression sours. "Tell me about it."

* * *

By and large, James and Sirius find the same things funny, which is why it's so unusual that Sirius is laughing at his brother's revelation while James is feeling the blood drain from his face.

He suddenly, acutely remembers what happened the last time someone promised Voldemort's demise, and what Voldemort made of it. The fallout is all around him. The secrecy, the wards, the paranoia. _That bloody prophecy_ , he thinks. _Beware of those who may listen_. Maybe Sirius is too paranoid. Maybe he, James, is _not paranoid enough_.

And he hates himself for it. But he loves his family more.

With a polite noise, he pushes past Remus to check on his son in the next room. Harry is, unbelievably, still asleep, tiny fists balled up next to his face, snorkelling around one of those inevitable baby colds. How he managed to get ill, when he's barely seen the outside world in his five months on this earth… Above the crib, winter lights are spinning slowly, glowing stars and moons and snowflakes chasing each other across the ceiling.

Lily is absolutely going to hex him if he picks up the baby and wakes him, and he's fighting the impulse hard. At not quite twenty-one, James feels entirely too young to be a cynic, and parts of him – the non-cynical parts – want to hold Harry close, tell him it might all be over soon, that maybe, just maybe – if all their lucky stars have aligned and Regulus is telling the truth, if they can navigate their way around spies and Voldemort's cleverness and their eternal bloody misfortune – it'll all be over soon, maybe they won't have to celebrate next Christmas in hiding, maybe Harry can grow up a normal kid without this huge, festering shadow over his life and the life of everyone who loves him. A kid who will never have to fulfil some bloody prophecy. A kid who will never have to doubt his friends. A kid who will just _live_.

Maybe.

Given their luck with this sort of thing, James wouldn't hold out too much hope.

When he leaves Harry's room, something is streaking past his leg. James has his wand drawn with all the reflexes Alastor Moody has drilled into him in two years of Auror training, before realising he's almost Stunned the bloody cat. She gives him an affronted meow before leading the way to the kitchen.

All right. Maybe he is being too paranoid, after all. Feeling entirely off-balance, James re-enters the kitchen. The first thing he does is catch Sirius's eyes, and what he sees surprises him.

A wink.

He's seen that fucking wink countless times. It's the wink that says, _Don't worry, I have a plan_. Historically it has been the sort of plan that involves six lies, one technicality, one illegal potion, a deus-ex-machina, and a detour round the castle. Also, historically, it has usually ended in detention. But Sirius's plans have become consistently better since Hogwarts, if not any less convoluted.

James draws a deep breath and gives himself an emphatic reminder that he trusts this man with his life. Then he nods slowly. Shoot him now, but he's going along with this new madness.

At this moment, the cellar door swings open, revealing Lily, who looks sooty and a little sweaty and quite pleased with herself. "It's Veritaserum!" she announces.

"What, in the name of rationality, is _that_?" says Regulus.

James looks at the orange furball at his feet. "That? Oh, that's Minnie." He thinks for a moment, then clarifies: "She's a cat."

"Are you _sure_?"

"She's half-kneazle, that's why she's so big," Sirius – who James knows hates the cat with all his might, but fair's fair, the cat hates him, too - informs him happily. "Sorry, we know mutts offend you."

Regulus ignores him. "And you called her _Minnie_?"

"We thought it was funny at the time," James says defensively.

"What's it to you?" says Sirius. "You had a pet slug once."

"Yes, but I didn't name it Horace!"

"No," says Sirius. "I recall you named it _Snuffles_ –"

A sharp, ear-splitting sound cuts them off. It turns out to be James' lovely, gentle wife and a two-finger whistle. "Did anyone hear what I just said?" says Lily, when she has everyone's attention. "It's Veritaserum. Highly concentrated, too. Three drops will give us an hour's worth of truth. There's enough for a second dose, too, if we really want to go to town."

She looks around. "I say 'we'," she says. "I guess, under the circumstances –"

"I'll do the honours," says Sirius. From the cabinet, he gets his favourite mug, because of course Sirius Black has a favourite mug in the Potter household, the one with the dancing Labradors on it. He fills it with tea from the pot James made, adds a splash of milk and two sugars, then counts out three drops from the vial.

"Drink up, brother," he says. Regulus does as he says without hesitation, and Sirius offers him a seat at the kitchen table, sitting down opposite to him.

Then Sirius thinks for about ten seconds longer than James has ever seen him think about anything, ever, before he starts talking. "Everything you said," he says eventually, "since you entered this house – is it true?"

"No," says Regulus.

A grown goes through the audience – and yes, three is probably an audience, thinks James. Even if they're a goat and a lettuce and a rebellious hat. James likes to think he's the wizard in this puzzle.

"Well then," says Sirius. "Which bits aren't true?"

"I don't think you're a moron," says Regulus. "I think you're horribly naïve, that you have entirely too much faith in so-called friendship and too little in family, and you're emotionally immature, but a moron -?"

"Gee, thanks, you misguided Slytherin wanker," says Sirius. "Anything else you lied about?"

Regulus shakes his head, looking entirely too comfortable.

"Too easy," mutters Sirius. "Need to _test_ this…" A valuable minute passes while Sirius thinks, obliterating the record he just set.

Then he leans forward and asks a second question.

"Of all the things you did while in Voldemort's service," he says, "which do you regret the most?"

Regulus almost jumps out of his chair. His hand flies to his mouth, and he bites, _hard_. They can only see his eyes, but he looks like a man who's not sure whether to yell or cry. A whimper escapes through his fingers.

"Holy shit," says James, watching in horror as blood dribble down that hand. Fuck him, but his best friend is a bit of a bastard.

Still, James goes along with what he can only assume is Sirius's plan. "Maybe you two should be doing this alone," he suggests.

"Good idea," says Sirius. "You lot – _out_!", and they scramble out of the kitchen, Remus and Lily and James, watching Sirius through the kitchen window as he holds his brother, gently prying his bloodied hand from his mouth. All they can hear from here is a soft murmur.

"So when he said he wanted to _test_ the Veritaserum…" says James faintly.

"Quite clever, actually," says Lily. "I'm surprised he even came up with it."

"Bit cruel, isn't it?" says James.

"Regulus _is_ a Death Eater," Lily reminds him. She watches them through the kitchen window. "Anyway," she says conversationally. "It's hard to fake pain. Easier to fake anger. Isn't it, Remus?"

Sometimes it still surprises James how perceptive his wife is. She, too, has spent the last five months confined to various safe houses, constantly in some sort of vague, far-away danger, going various shades of bonkers from the combined effects of boredom and threat. Of course, they all have some sort of cabin fever – Sirius with his paranoia, James with his Harry-related anxiety – but Lily picks up on entirely different aspects of whatever is going on here.

Remus takes a deep breath. "It's a test, all right," he says.

James is painfully reminded why Remus is their friend – because he's clever, because he picks up on moods and undercurrents. Because he can smell a terrible plan a mile away. Without Moony, the Marauders might just have been a trio of bumbling pranksters. Wait, no, of course not. A duo. He doubts Peter would have put up with just James and Sirius for any appreciable amount of time.

Right now, his second-oldest friend regards him with a look that says, quite clearly and in poncy Latin, _Et tu, Brute?_

What James would like to reply is, _Don't look at me, I'm just trying to optimise the river crossing problem!_ , but that is beyond even his expressive abilities.

"How do you mean, Remus?" says Lily.

At this, Remus manages a tired smile. "The spy would not be content to wait in the hall while Regulus is spilling the beans on how to bring Voldemort down, would he?"

"Sirius doesn't think – you?" says Lily, blinking. "With all the dodgy characters we have in the Order –"

"Hate to break it to you," says Remus, not without humour, "but I _am_ one of the dodgy characters in the Order."

Lily laughs grimly. "Yeah," she says. "But you know what I mean."

"Makes sense, though," says Remus. "Like Sirius is content to be betrayed by a random weirdo Dumbledore grabbed off the street. Lacks grandeur, doesn't it?"

"Want me to go shout at him?" says Lily.

"To what point?" says Remus. "You know how Sirius is with ideas. He doesn't let go of one until he himself has crashed it to the ground. Let it crash. Do our work in the meantime. This is more important."

Lily is very silent for a while. Then she says, "You know, we find ourselves in the unique situation where we actually have a solution to this," she says.

"Yes," says Remus. "And I am quite sure Sirius will try and dose me with Veritaserum by the end of the night. If he ever works up his nerve to a confrontation."

"At which point you'll tell him to go fuck himself, right?" says Lily.

"I daresay the point has been made," says Remus.

"Oh, how I long for simpler times," says Lily, with a sigh of resignation. "Ten points off Gryffindor."

Then her attention zones in on her husband. "James," she says. "You are very quiet."

James is looking at his shoes. Ninety-nine per cent. He has already established he is ninety-nine per cent sure Remus is not the spy. Would he bet his life on this?

Would he bet Harry's?

"We wait," he says.

Which is easier said than done. Sirius is taking almost the full hour, and it does get boring. Lily bravely attempts to keep up a conversation, which turns out to be a bit of a job considering all involved parties seem to long for nothing more than a nap on the sofa.

"You know, Remus, I have a fully equipped Potions lab in the cellar," she says at one point, "and not a terrible lot to do. Would you like something for that pain?"

Remus straightens up reflexively, as if he's caught himself giving away a secret. "I'm fine," he says, and James finally understands why it's so aggravating to Lily whenever he does the same.

"I gather the mission didn't go too well, did it?" says Lily.

Remus shrugs. "I had low expectations when I went in," he says. "I must say they were met in full."

"A typical Dumbledore, then," Lily mutters.

In between attempts at conversation, James has time to check on all the wards surrounding the house – they're in perfect working order - , he has time to check on Harry – still snoring – and he's seriously considering feeding the cat and watering the violets when Sirius finally beckons them back into the kitchen.

"Finally," says Lily.

Regulus is leaning against the wall, white as a sheet. His caring brother must have supplied him with a Muggle cigarette. Probably the perfect moment to start smoking, thinks James. Sirius himself, standing next to him, looks to be at least on his third.

"So," says Lily, crossing her arms. "How are we kicking Voldemort's arse?"

"Long story," says Sirius, with the faint air of someone entirely out of their depth. "Dumbledore will have kittens."

"I was hoping for a bit more than that," says Lily.

"It's a typical Voldemort," says Sirius. "Convoluted, nasty, dark magic. I'm convinced we'll go through it a million more times, but –"

He straightens himself, even stops lounging. Looking at no-one in particular, he continues, "Before that story leaves this room – before _any_ of you leave this room - I believe there's a question that needs answering."

He idly turns his wand in his fingers as he addresses Regulus. "You said I had too much faith in friendship," he says. "Fine. This is me, losing faith. Happy?"

"It doesn't become you." Regulus looks at him, his grey eyes watchful. "If you want to know about the spy -"

"Well then," says Sirius, with a nonchalance James wouldn't have thought him capable at this point. "Who is it?"

There's a long pause. Then Regulus says, "I don't know. I saw him at a gathering once, but he was wearing the mask and cloak at the time. All his spies do."

"Yeah, we know," says Sirius, and James doesn't miss his eyes flickering to the Veritaserum on the table. Then he says, "What can you tell us about him? How tall is he?"

"Hard to say," says Regulus. "He was kneeling. A fair bit shorter than the Dark Lord, I'd say."

"I never thought I'd get a chance to ask this," says Sirius, "but how tall is Voldemort, anyway?"

Regulus smiles faintly. "Not as tall as you'd think."

Sirius takes a deep breath, the grip on his wand tightening. "Taller than him?" he says.

And points at Remus.

"Sirius, you utter _wanker_ –" says Remus, his voice barely more than a growl. He's reaching for his own wand.

Regulus, however, is laughing. "Of course not. Are you joking, brother? You think it's _Lupin_? After all the trouble he caused in Snowdonia?"

"Thank you for noticing," says Remus, sort of placated but also visibly irritated about it. He hasn't put his wand away.

"Oh, the Dark Lord noticed," says Regulus. "He definitely noticed. You might want to be more careful in the future."

There's a hint of hesitation, and a lot of annoyance. "The message has been conveyed to me," Remus says.

Regulus turns back to Sirius. "Besides, Lupin is Welsh. Your spy doesn't have much of an accent, but at a guess –"

There's a sort of banging noise from the hallway. At their feet, the cat starts hissing.

"I would say –"

A dark figure looms behind the kitchen door window.

"Yorkshire," finishes Regulus.

Peter explodes out of the doorway, takes aim at the Black brothers, and fills the kitchen with deadly green light.

* * *

 _To be continued._

 _...Apologies for using the same cliffhanger twice. I promise I will not do that again! Next (and last) chapter: Remus!_


	4. Remus I of II

**Note** : All right, so I was going to publish the fourth and last chapter some time next weekend, but two things happened: a) it _grew_ (it is well past 9.000 words by now), and b) I'm quite happy with the first part (as much fun as multiple POVs are, I just love writing Remus 3 ). I was also feeling a bit guilty about the bloody cliffhanger that's been hanging there for two chapters now. Plus, I rather wanted to post this while Peter's deranged introspective rant in chapter 2 is still fresh in everyone's minds, because this part directly references it.

So, without further ado, here's chapter 4a, with part 4b hopefully posted by next weekend.

(Again, thank you so much for your wonderful comments and other forms of feedback, it makes my day, and makes me write faster ^^)

* * *

 **The Age of Lies 4a/4**

* * *

 **Regulus, January 1981**

Regulus is not sure how the time has passed, or why so much of it did before he even noticed.

Grimmauld Place used to be timeless. Or rather: It used to be nothing but time, Georgian façade and 18th century Persian rugs and Victorian four poster beds and a six hundred years old oak tree in the garden. It used to be a lifetime of waiting for summer to end. But now time has turned dark and sneaked past unnoticed, like a wicked shadow beneath his feet. The air is poisoned with the waste of it.

Doxies in the curtains, woodworm in the timber. He should have left earlier.

His mother, too, has declined rapidly, like an ancient marble statue finally exposed to the elements. By the looks of it, there has been nothing but unrelenting hail, never-ending frost. Regulus would like to think it started with his father's passing, but it didn't, it started when Regulus returned from certain death and brought that _thing_ with him, that thing that is now three things, in a way: The locket from the Dark Lord's nightmare cave, safe in Regulus's bedroom. The diary in Cissy's library, the cup in Bella's summer residence, both safe there until he's ready to extract them.

Three must be enough, he thinks: Grimmauld Place is dying, and if three things can't weigh up Regulus's sins, then six or nine or twelve won't, either.

(How many are there, even? He'd thought the Dark Lord was insane. But to split his soul into three or six or nine or twelve – that's neither sane nor insane. It's something else entirely.)

The thing is sending black tendrils out, twisting and curling and wrapping themselves around every bit of darkness they can find, and there is plenty of darkness in Grimmauld Place, and there is plenty of darkness in Walburga Black. And Regulus can't say what they're forming, a cocoon or a web or a nest, just that his mother is in the centre of it.

His mother is in her bedroom. She can't stand being in the drawing room, the tapestry depresses her, with everyone dead or blasted off or fighting a war in which there are only losing sides, and everywhere else is too cold. She much prefers the rocking chair by the window overlooking the garden, with its ancient oak tree.

"Mother," he says, coming up to her.

Not looking up, she waves her hand in a now-familiar way, and when that doesn't work, she says, "Go talk to the portrait."

Regulus fights down the impulse to inform her that her portrait's _insane_. The terrible thing is that he understands why she's had it commissioned: She's doesn't wish to speak to anyone anymore. That doesn't mean a portrait is going to do a better job.

Especially not that one.

"I'm leaving, Mother," he says.

Walburga's eyes are on the oak tree outside. Its crown is full of mistletoe, almost humming with its plant magic.

"The tree is sick," she says. "It needs pruning."

Regulus says nothing. The tree is dying; it's the mistletoe that's killing it.

"Sixteen generations of Blacks had their wands cut from that tree," says Walburga.

Though not the current one, thinned out as it is. Regulus is about to repeat himself when Walburga finally speaks. "Once is not enough?" she says. "You left years ago. You ran away, the shame of it, I cried for a year -"

He lays a hand on her shoulder. "It's me, Regulus."

She huffs impatiently. "You," she says. "You died." She doesn't say, _I cried for a year_. Strong emotions are for his brother, always have been.

Her bedroom, too, is still filled with Christmas decorations that Kreacher has put up, green fir sprigs, spinning silvery stars, but the beeswax candles have never been lit. Regulus lets the silent seconds tick away, gives his mother a chance to line up her memories.

Then he says, "Not yet."

"You were a good boy." She talks like she always does: As if she's reciting lines she's learned from heart a long time ago. "Pride of our family. You fought for what was right –"

"I am now," Regulus says. "Thank you for your kind words, Mother."

He does hope his family will be proud of him in the end, or what's left of them – his mother, Narcissa, even Bellatrix. He's not sure this is something they are capable of. They will have to change first, and change is not something that comes easy to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

It hasn't come easy to him.

"Have you heard from your brother?" she says suddenly. His mother does that sometimes, when she doesn't take him for Sirius altogether. She just perks up and asks after him, and Regulus doesn't know if it's because she thinks Sirius is still writing him letters, or because she wants to know if the Death Eaters have finally captured him.

"Not recently," he says.

"He came to the funeral, you know."

"Did he?" says Regulus. "That's good, isn't it?"

There's just one funeral she could be referring to. Regulus's memories of it are hazy, and not because he had been blinded by grief at the time. Well, he had been, but not for his late father. Still, he's quite sure that Sirius showing up would have registered through the mental fog. The ensuing riot alone would have been hard to miss.

"As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly," sniffs Walburga. "Like Polyjuice could deceive me. He was always such a daddy's boy –"

 _He really wasn't_ , thinks Regulus. _He just hated you even more_. His mind is reeling softly. It's laughably easy to believe Sirius has done something so tremendously stupid as to walk into a funeral full of the relatives he'd snubbed, guarded by Death Eaters who were after his head. It's harder to think of a reason _why_. Not to honour their father. Certainly not to console their mother. Which meant -

"Of course, he was weak," says Walburga. "Always weak, always soft-hearted," and he can almost see her mental focus skipping a few years, to the summer of 1976 - he knows before she says it: "I had to do it, you see. I didn't have a choice."

 _Weak_. Sirius had returned to the snake pit only to see how his Death Eater brother had been faring. It's an oddly comforting thought, even if it's almost certainly one of Walburga's false memories, one of her paranoid ideas. She sees Polyjuice on every stranger, Dementors under every drawn hood, Veritaserum in every cup of tea. She sees Sirius whenever Regulus enters her room.

He'll have to ask him if it's true.

"I know, Mother," says Regulus. "Let's hope you're right. Let's hope he is as weak as you think."

Walburga sighs, a long drawn-out exhale like she doesn't ever want to take another breath again. But even she can't fight her cerebellum, that pesky reflex that makes her breathe and breathe and breathe, dead air and dust and memories. "Tell the portrait," she says dramatically. "Tell her where you've gone. She'll bear witness. She'll be all that's left of us."

Regulus thinks back to a time when the only thing that would be left of him was a scribbled note in a fake locket. He should have been more careful. He should have been a lot of things. As it is, he's pretty much fucked. But.

Still.

If that one-finger salute to the Dark Lord is going to be his legacy, then he's okay with that.

* * *

His first impulse is to go directly to Sirius – it's an age-old impulse, dating back to a time before Hogwarts, before he could lie, hell, before he could _speak_ – and he dismisses it. There's no _time_ for first impulses, neither his nor Sirius's. It's how Regulus will end up Stunned or killed the second he shows his face.

Who, then? An image of his old Headmaster flashes in his mind. He doesn't trust Dumbledore any farther than he can throw him, and he doesn't trust anyone in Dumbledore's phony Order not blab to the Dark Lord's most priced spy, but since he has to pick one anyway -

Potter, he thinks. Sirius's chosen brother. He can keep Sirius's first impulses in check. Plus, the choice is undeniably practical: At least he knows where Potter lives. The spy has seen to that.

London has been drizzly and windy, but out here in Cornwall, it's pouring. Regulus doesn't bother with a rain-repellent charm – nothing else he's done to the Horcrux has dented it, he's fairly sure it can withstand a bit of water – and is careful to trip all of the wards around the Potter's cottage. Inside, alarms should be going off like the Muggles' New Year Eve celebrations a couple of days ago. Good. He doesn't mean to sneak in, after all.

The last barrier can only be lifted from the other side, so he waits. Across the lawn, the door opens and a woman appears, a wand in her hand. The first thing he remembers is her name. _Evans_. The second thing he remembers is _Muggleborn_.

The third thing he remembers is his mother's rant when Evans was made Head Girl. _Blood is the glue of wizarding society._ The fourth thing he remembers isagreeing. He still would, if he hadn't done more to bring down wizarding society than Evans's mere existence ever could. Irony? A lesson? Both?

There's still time to flee. She has no reason to trust him, every reason to hate him. Every reason to kill him where he stands. Regulus wills himself to stay where he is.

Then Evans laughs. "Finally, something's happening around here," she shouts across the lawn. "Hey, Sirius, how big is your wand?"

Regulus has _not_ expected that.

He hasn't seen Sirius in _years_ , hasn't been mixed up with him by anyone but his mother for even longer. But of course, they've always looked alike, and in the dark, with the pouring rain, and himself allegedly dead… "Fourteen inches," is what he _almost_ answers, but no way would Sirius Black give a straight answer to a question as loaded as this.

Well then. Time for amateur dramatics.

"Well, one of them's fourteen inches," he drawls, "and the other is even harder to believe."

There is a pause. "Correct," says Evans at last. "Come on in, insufferable git. Kettle's just boiled."

He walks slowly across the lawn. Stepping into the square of light from the house feels like crossing the Rubicon, and he raises his empty hands as soon as the light hits his face.

Evidently Evans is not only in the Order because she is so damn decorative. A flick of her wand sends Regulus's own wand flying towards her before her face has even settled into the shocked expression it is wearing now. The silence stretches between them.

He wonders what she sees. Does she start out with Sirius, note all the ways he doesn't quite make sense? Does she recognise the Prefect he used to be? They'd worked together once, after all.

"What do you want?" she says, finally.

He keeps his hands where she can see them. "Help," he says.

He's quite an accomplished Occlumens, and he knows when someone isn't. Regulus can almost _see_ the myriads of thoughts running through her head. Her confidence wins out. Maybe her boredom, too. "You can have tea," she says noncommittally. "And I'll contact Sirius."

"Thank you."

"Come in, it's pouring." She steps backwards into the house, never letting him out of her sight, and he follows at a safe distance. "Shoes off," she says, when they're in the corridor. "And if you so much as touch my son," she adds, "I _will_ eat you. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly clear," he says, and lets her direct him into the kitchen.

* * *

 **Remus, January 1981**

In the brief instant where everything is possible, between the noise and the flash, when he recognises Peter's face through the kitchen door window, exactly two thoughts go through Remus's head:

One: How much time, exactly, has passed, since they've given Regulus the Veritaserum? At a guess, an hour. More or less.

Two: When, exactly, has he started to trust Regulus over Peter? When he said, "Yorkshire accent"? Or before?

So, admittedly there's a bit of uncertainty attached to the entire situation, but fortunately for all of them, Remus is a quick thinker, and he has even quicker reflexes, honed and, frankly, reshaped, by his recent four-week stint in a forest full of wolves.

And wizards barging in with their wands raised are an excellent trigger for those reflexes.

He goes for the throat.

And the wand arm.

Green light flashes all around them, there's shouting, noise, bodies hitting the ground. Only when Remus has Peter securely pinned against the wall, hand clamped around his wrist, does he dare to look around.

James and Lily have dived under the kitchen table, looking utterly shocked. Taking up the space between them is Minnie, bored already after a burst of feline self-preservation.

Part of the far wall and ceiling have caved in, and the January night sky peeks through, incongruous in the bright, friendly kitchen. Sirius has thrown himself across his brother; both are lying motionless on the tiles, their wands rolled far away. Through the expanding cloud of dusty mortar, he can't see more than their outlines.

Deceptive and calm. Like a snow day.

Remus can't dwell, not now. He wrestles his attention back onto the man in front of him.

"Let go of that wand," he snarls, and pushes down on Peter's wrist with only a fraction of the force at his disposal, and oh, Peter has no idea how much force that is.

Remus can _feel_ the flux of magic in Peter's wand arm, prickling under his fingers, like he's touching badly insulated wire. Peter's wand is pointed up and he can still blast the ceiling off the kitchen if he so desires, bury them all in bricks and mortar and scuttle off down a drain, but will he? And then the flux _surges_ and -

Remus twists. The _snap_ is unfathomably loud in the silence.

Peter's wand clatters to the floor, smoking faintly from short-circuited magic. A shocked second passes and then Peter _howls_ , cradling his broken wrist. Remus kicks the wand under the oven.

"How many warnings did you think you were going to get?" he says hoarsely.

It's like a spell has lifted. James and Lily look at each other, and say "Harry!", identical expressions of terror on their faces. They're out of the kitchen in a flash and they can hear them in the next room, Lily and James shouting and then the cries of a grumpy, woken-up, _healthy_ baby -

"Sirius, say something," Remus commands, careful not to let even a hint of emotion enter his voice.

For a long, murderous second there is nothing. Then -

"Oof," says Sirius. The first part of him that moves is his finger, to poke Regulus in the ribs.

There is no yelp. There is merely a dignified response of "I will break _your_ wrist if you do that again."

"Oh good, you're alive." Satisfied, Sirius slowly gets off the floor, collects his and Regulus's wands, then extends a hand for his brother.

"Thanks," says Regulus quietly, clambering up from the floor to stand on legs that hardly shake at all. Then he addresses Remus, his eyes flickering towards the still hysterical Peter. "Bad day?" he says.

"You have no idea," says Remus. He returns his attention to Peter, who is now squirming in his iron grip. "I didn't even know a silent Avada Kedavra was possible," he says conversationally.

"Let go of me, you blinded idiot," says Peter. "That's Regulus Black, he's a Death Eater, you _know_ that!"

"I know what he is," says Remus. "But what are you?"

"I said let go!" Peter's face reflects impatience, which appears deliberate, and too many thoughts at once, which doesn't. "What is your deal, attacking me and protecting him? Unless –"

Peter's face lights up. Not quite lightbulb, but he's making an effort. That wrist must _hurt_.

"It's you, isn't it?" he whispers. "Of course – gone most of the time, secret missions you can't breathe a word about, lies and lies and lies –"

Sirius strolls up to them, covered in dust and bits of wallpaper, all posture and poise and playing up the posh heir. It may not even be intentional, just something he falls back on when he's stressed. "Are you perhaps implying Moony is the spy?" Sirius inquires politely. Remus quietly thinks that this is a bit rich, coming from him, but right now he won't argue the point.

"Have you maybe missed the part where that maniac just _broke my wrist_!" shouts Peter.

"You fired a Killing Curse at a room full of people," says Sirius. "It's a fair reaction."

"I fired a Killing Curse at your Death Eater brother! _That's_ a fair reaction, I should say!"

"I think we're going round in circles," says Remus. He lets go of Peter, all but shoves him onto a kitchen chair. "And don't you dare turn rat," he adds in a friendly voice, "I don't think Minnie has been fed today."

The cat prowling at their feet gives an affirmative yowl.

Over Peter's head, Sirius catches his eyes. His expression is carefully guarded as he lets his gaze flicker subtly to the vial he's left on the kitchen counter. Remus shakes his head in response. No Veritaserum. _Not yet_.

There is value in lies, if you know how to read them.

"A question, Wormy," says Sirius. "How did you know to come here today?"

Peter looks up at him like he can't believe he's even in this situation. But between Remus's hand on his shoulder and Sirius's cool grey eyes boring into his, he hurries to explain himself, as if they're still at Hogwarts. As if he did nothing more than botch a prank.

"I went to check on Moony but he wasn't home," Peter says, slowly regaining control over his heavy breathing. "I got his note at Headquarters, said he was back, said he was _fine_ , but, you know –"

No-one volunteers to fill the pause Peter leaves for them, so he is forced to carry on.

"I was worried!" he says. "Moony comes back a week late, he's spent the full moon in the field and you _know_ what can happen, and he didn't even report back in person, highly irregular, what was I supposed to think? Dearborn went ballistic, it was all I could do not to have him written up."

He looks up to Remus, musters him very, very carefully, and Remus knows he notes the heaviness of his shoulders, the asymmetry in his posture. "You don't _look_ fine, by the way," Peter says, his voice a careful mix of concern and suspicion. "What happened?"

"You must know already, you were on communications duty," says Remus. "You got all my messages."

"Messages?" says Peter. "I don't remember any –"

"Then let me remind you," says Remus. "On the 22nd, I notified the Order about Death Eater activity in the forest and asked for intel. No response. On the 25th, I requested urgent reinforcements. No response."

He circles the table to face Peter directly, and Peter all but shrinks under his glare. "We were outnumbered against the Death Eaters, trapped, and helpless. Twelve men and women died on Christmas Day. Slowly." He pauses to force the tremble out of his voice, the silver wire, the poisoned darts. "Four children, too."

At that, he looks away from Peter, if only to keep himself from counting all the bones Peter has left to break. But elsewhere isn't better. He can barely stand the new look of concern on Sirius's face, nor the flicker of – shame? Guilt? – on his brother's.

When he turns his attention back on Peter, he sees the one thing he hasn't expected. _Horror_. Remus's resolve falters. Has he got it wrong after all?

And then Peter opens his mouth again. "But you survived," he says. His eyes are glittering with what Remus supposes is intended to reflect Holmesian deduction skills, but comes across as pure malice. "How come you always end up in these impossible situations? How come you always survive?"

It's not as if Remus hasn't asked himself the same thing. And, because he's clever, he has figured out the answer, or parts of it. Because he's a Werewolf with a wand and a Hogwarts education, less ruthless than Greyback, but more persuasive. Dumbledore isn't the only one who values these skills.

It is not an answer he is intent on offering right now, and Peter smiles with a hint of triumph, and turns to Sirius. As he does it, he clasps his hurt wrist, instantly looking just a hint pathetic. Just a hint incompetent.

After all these years, he's finally turned it into a weapon.

"We talked about this, Padfoot," Peter says. "You _know_ it's him. You did the maths, you _said_ it couldn't be anyone else. You _tested_ him, for fuck's sake. Guess what? That information got leaked. You said you _understood_. You said he has no perspective here, he has no reason to be fighting for our side – you said you _pity_ him, really -"

He takes a deep breath. "You know the Dark Lord's trying to recruit Werewolves," he adds. "You know what he's promised them. And God knows Moony likes to roam free –"

Sirius pales, and that's all Remus needs to know this is true, he really has said all of these things. To Peter.

"I was an idiot," Sirius whispers.

"No, Padfoot, you're an idiot now," says Peter, and now that he's finally found his footing, his voice is calm, understanding. "I'm sorry, but it's the truth. Look, I understand, Padfoot. Your brother is back from the dead, now wonder you're not thinking straight. I can't even _begin_ to understand what you must be feeling right now. But listen. Listen to me, all right? Yes, he's here, but he's a Death Eater. I can only assume he's fed you a bunch of lies, likely on the Dark Lord's orders. They must have noticed you were catching on to Moony, so they gave you a mad new idea and you ran away with it."

Peter sighs, sadly, his pale blue eyes turning watery. "I understand, I really do. You think the world of Moony. You never liked me much. It's okay, I get it."

His voice is breaking slightly at that.

"But this is a war, and if you let your wishful thinking get in the way, you're _helping the spy_."

Sirius, as Remus before, is momentarily speechless. Regulus, on the other hand, has watched the whole thing play out impassively. But he, too, is extremely alert.

There's shuffling behind them. Lily, cradling a crying Harry in her arms, remains in the hall, never letting go of her wand, but James enters the kitchen. Who knows how long they have stood listening in the open door.

"James, finally," exclaims Peter. "Talk some sense into our idiot friends, will you? And if I could bother Lily for a quick healing spell, I'd much appreciate –"

"No," says James.

Peter starts sweating. "Look, mate, I get that today must have been stressful for all of us, but –"

"You tried to kill Sirius," says James flatly.

"Oh, not you, too," says Peter. "Okay, I overreacted. I admit it. It was his brother I aimed for. I see a Death Eater, I attack, okay?"

"Weren't you even the tiniest bit surprised to see him alive?" inquires Remus, who has finally found his voice.

"Yes, but, hello? Death Eater!" says Peter.

"He was unarmed!" snaps Sirius.

"He's a Death Eater!" says Peter. "For fuck's sake." He crosses his arms, and winces.

Regulus's smooth, soft voice drops into the argument like sealing wax. "So are you," he says.

"They were right next to each other," says James, "and you didn't take time to aim." He takes a step forward. "You didn't care. You blasted away half the house -"

"That's because Moony –"

"My _son_ was sleeping in the next room. You didn't care."

"I said I was sorry!" shouts Peter. "Look, no harm done! It was a reflex! You've forgiven _him_ for far worse!"

And he gestures to Sirius.

Which, Remus reflects, is an understandable reaction. Also, at this moment, it's entirely the wrong one. Maybe James is a hypocrite, maybe he's only human, but it obviously makes a large difference to him whether someone endangers the people he loves – or Severus Snape.

" _Silencio_ ," says James, and Peter shuts up involuntarily.

"Sorry, mate," James says bitterly. "Your Yorkshire accent was coming through."

He picks up the vial of Veritaserum from the kitchen counter and hands it to Remus. "Do it," he says, and his voice is full of _Head Boy_ and _Dad_ and _Prongs, king of the forest_.

"Ooh, let me," says Sirius.

"No," says Remus. "You had your fun. I'm doing this."

"But –"

" _Trust me_ ," says Remus, with so much emphasis he feels the words may explode in his mouth. Sirius has the decency to look sheepish.

"Besides," he adds, as the entirety of the whole situation is starting to catch up with him, "do you realise how lucky we just got?"

He gestures at the hole in the kitchen, at Peter slumped over at the kitchen table, at the dust still dancing in the air. "No, you take your brother to safety. The two of you go straight to Dumbledore, and you tell him everything you know."

After a moment, Sirius nods grimly. His brother appears less convinced.

"Are you, perhaps, insane?" says Regulus politely. "We can't just waltz into Hogwarts -"

Sirius laughs. "You'd be surprised."

Regulus doesn't respond. Reluctance to go is written all over his young face. James slips out of the kitchen, and returns after a minute with the silvery Invisibility Cloak under his arm. He presses it into Sirius's hands.

"I don't trust him," says Regulus, when it has become quite clear that they're going, and that they're going now. His expression has evolved and, for the first time this evening, he looks _scared_.

"Don't worry, Kiddo," says Remus. "Dumbledore will listen to you. You have exactly what he values in people."

"Which is what, exactly?" says Regulus.

" _Utility_ ," says Remus.

Sirius whistles through his teeth. "You really are grouchy today, Moony, aren't you?" To his brother he says, "Don't be scared. I'll be with you all the way. He'll listen to you."

"I'm not scared," says Regulus, a sure sign the Veritaserum has finally worn off. "I just don't trust him."

"Oh, come on," says Sirius. "Be a Gryffindor."

"Be an idiot, more like," says Regulus. "Out of the snake pit, into the –"

"If you want to be coddled, take it up with the badgers," Sirius snaps.

Regulus shakes his head free of emotion, the mask of Occlumency settling in once again, and he doesn't protest when Sirius takes hold of his arm. Still, he looks like nothing so much as a lamb led to slaughter when Sirius nudges him forward, whispering into his ear in a low voice – no, not to slaughter, Remus reminds himself, and certainly not a lamb, either. Finally, Regulus nods, giving in, or giving up.

In passing, Sirius gives Remus a look, which is unreadable. Remus gives him a look in return, which says _Later_. Then Sirius leads his brother outside, to the Apparition point beyond the wards.

Remus steels himself for a moment.

Then he says, "Finite," says Remus, and Peter gasps audibly.

"Moony, my friend," he says, as if he hadn't just tried to prove Remus was the spy, "you're not – you're not going to poison me, are you?"

Remus carefully measures three drops of Veritaserum into a shot glass full of tap water. "Of course not," he says sharply. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Unless, of course, you lied to us."

At this, James startles, visibly pale. "I don't want to be here for this," he says, and turns to be with his wife and child, leaving Remus and Peter to untangle the Marauders' last, and worst prank.

Tough luck.

"You stay where you are," says Remus.

"It's my house," James points out. "I go wherever I want."

Remus sighs deeply. "Tell him, Lily."

Lily, too, hesitates – she's watched this friendship grow from the side-lines, and if she's even half the woman Remus thinks she is, she wants to spare her husband from watching its destruction. But she's also a Muggleborn, and there are some things she understands a hundred times better than him.

"Peter's confession won't hold up in court if the only witness is a Werewolf," she says. " _Or_ a Muggleborn. Stay, James. You owe him." She doesn't say who.

"We made this, James," says Remus. "People aren't born spies. This grew among us, and we were blind, or ignorant, or criminally negligent. Don't you turn your back on him now."

James looks at him for a long moment. Then he nods.

Peter squirms and wriggles and is not having it, coming close to knocking over the priceless potion. Remus looks up at James, nods at him, and finally, James gets it, gets the whole terrible truth of it: That Remus is a Werewolf, and he can't afford to step out of line. Not now.

James can, he always could, and he casts a silent, transient Imperius on Peter, just enough so he drinks the potion without spilling it.

And Remus thinks. Three questions, he thinks. He can do it in three questions.

One. "Do you work for Voldemort?"

"Yes."

Two. "Have you been passing information to him?"

"Yes."

Remus hesitates, because he doesn't want to know. And who would? This is their childhood friend, and he's been working to get them killed, or framed, or thrown into Azkaban. Who'd want to know?

Except Sirius, he realises with sudden, mind-blowing clarity. Sirius has never hesitated to poke where it _hurts_. Even if it took him a while to understand that not everywhere he finds hurt, there's betrayal.

Remus draws breath, he knows this is the final moment, the last time he can still justifiably pretend they're friends – maybe Peter has been forced, maybe Peter has been scared, maybe he has been tortured, or deceived, or bribed. Maybe he'd thought it was the lesser of two evils.

But the moment passes, and here they are. No more denial. No more lies. Only answers.

Three. "Why?"

Peter opens his mouth, and he looks so defeated right now that Remus has half a mind to jump up and take him in his arms, the way he saw Sirius with his brother, but no. Because Peter has gone the other way. Because he's not wrecked with regret. He's just scrambling to justify himself.

"I am not a psychopath," Peter says. It sounds like he's reading from a script. "Not like Sirius is. I've never just woken up one morning and decided I'm going to break the Marauders."

From there, it just comes spilling out.

* * *

 _To be continued._


	5. Remus II of II

**Note** : Thank you again for your wonderful feedback! :) I'm concluding this little story with chapter 4b, in the hope it makes you guys happy. As usual, I'm looking forward to hearing what you think!

* * *

 **The Age of Lies, 4b/4**

* * *

Peter's testimony is not what Remus expects. It's so much worse. If, after all these years, after all that's happened, anyone had called Remus a romantic, he'd have laughed. But for some reason, he expects a story, a narrative, maybe a lesson. Something new. Instead he stares at the maggoty underside of the rock that is their school time friendship. Of all the things, he hasn't expected the familiar.

And when the flood of words degrades into a trickle and then a drought at the end of one hour, Remus is not sure they have truly come out on top.

Hours later, when they're finally done – when the Order has come and gone, when they've taken Peter, when they've checked and re-checked the wards, closed up the hole in the kitchen with magically reinforced tarpaulin – it doesn't feel like they're done at all. For a short moment, Remus had thought this would be the day he finally knew what tomorrow would bring. No such luck.

Remus is set to go home now. But home is a cold, dusty flat with unread books in it, half-empty takeaway containers, and milk that has gone off in the fridge. So naturally he stalls, lights up a cigarette on the patio, and watches the January sun rise, bleary and dull like the eyes of a fevery child.

With every drag, every exhale, he can feel the last remnants of anger seep out of his mind, his body – and other things come trickling back. The bone-deep fatigue he's ignored since he stepped foot in his flat and found Sirius and James snooping through his things. The lingering smell of death and woodfire in every breath he draws, of gunpowder and brimstone in every useless spell he casts. The holes Greyback has torn into his neck and back, their edges held together by Dittany and stubbornness. A message for the Order, the man had said, and not one Remus ever intends to pass on. But no, of course not. A message for Remus himself. A reminder where he belongs.

Middle age can't come quick enough.

The patio door opens and closes behind him, and of course it's Sirius Black. _Bloody menace_ , thinks Remus. _Bipolar arsehole_. Peter's words are ricocheting around in his mind like so much shrapnel, unkind and without mercy. But wrong? Sirius is making soft shooing noises, and Remus turns wearily towards man and baby.

Harry is wrapped in a thick blanket printed all over with cuddly cartoon dragons, and only his tiny little face peers out. Sirius holds him up like a shield. As if Remus had the energy left to attack him.

Instead, he extinguishes his cigarette. James would have a fit if he smoked around Harry.

"You're back, then," he states.

Sirius looks up quickly, as if he's surprised he isn't being ignored. He catches himself quickly. "Lily's passed out on the sofa," he says, in an explanation of his presence on the patio. "And I sent James to bed, I think he's been crying. The baby was getting all soggy."

"Soggier, I should think," says Remus, and Sirius gives him a very careful smile.

The baby should look out of place on someone like Sirius, with his leather jacket, and his movie star youth, and the tattoos peeking out of his shirt. Instead, he handles Harry with well-practised ease – they all do, he's the first baby in their group of friends, and just passing Harry around can keep them entertained for hours. A desolate James, on the other hand, is a territory far less travelled.

Remus deliberately turns his attention back on the Potters' surprisingly well-kept garden. He supposes hiding does get boring. "James has taken this hard," he informs the shrubbery beyond the patio railing. "But he has so much more to lose than either of us. Came closer, too."

"We already lost it," says Sirius, stepping up next to him because, apparently, why not. "I mean, I did. Threw it away. What an idiot, eh?"

He is surprisingly hard to ignore, even now. For some reason Remus has expected this would go pretty much like sixth year, six months of silence or longer. He should have known. Sirius can't stand repetition.

Somewhat belatedly, Remus finds himself nodding. He can't bear to look at Sirius's face now, instead he tries to catch Harry's attention. But Harry just coos and wriggles in his godfather's arm, determined to tumble down eventually, as awake as only a baby can be after a night like this.

"How are you feeling?" says Sirius. It is not a question he typically asks, and Remus takes some time to ponder it. Somewhere beneath the fatigue, he's sure he's feeling _something_.

"Like we dodged a bullet," says Remus finally. "Muggle expression," he clarifies after a moment.

"I've watched all your shitty crime programmes, haven't I," says Sirius. "You're right. Dodged it big time."

Well, that doesn't sound right, thinks Remus. "Little bit grazed by it, maybe," he offers.

"True," says Sirius. "Where's Peter?"

"Order Headquarters." He still can't look at Sirius properly, but out of the corner of his eyes, he sees one of those posh eyebrows rise in surprise.

"Not with the Aurors?" says Sirius.

"Lily and I talked James out of it," says Remus.

Sirius still shows no sign of getting it as he confusedly keeps a somersaulting Harry from flinging himself off his arms.

"Oh, you posh boys. Pure as the driven snow," Remus says eventually, when no reaction is forthcoming. "You two really think you're invincible, don't you? Think it through. If there is a trial – if he talks –"

"Let him," says Sirius, with deep, careless conviction.

"Failure to register as an Animagus gets you up to five years in Azkaban," says Remus. "Let Peter talk, and he takes out two of Voldemort's major opponents for years, just like that. I mean, don't let this get to your head, but it may very well change the course of the war."

"I think you're underestimating Peter's sense of self-preservation, mate," says Sirius. "He has nothing to gain from telling them we're all Animagi, he'd be out of Azkaban so fast as a rat – " His brain catches up with his mouth. "Oy, that's not good, is it."

"Voldemort is the vindictive type," says Remus. "I doubt even the walls of Azkaban could stop him. Peter fucked up, he'll want leverage. Taking you and James out – that's leverage."

Sirius nods, his expression darkening. His voice, when he speaks, somehow sounds younger. "You really think they'd convict us, after all these years? We were underage at the time."

"You are of age and still unregistered," Remus reminds him. "The law isn't vague on this."

"Oh," says Sirius, which is his go-to response for the occasions his juvenile delinquency catches up with him. "What do you suggest instead? That we let him go? Or that we –"

He doesn't complete that sentence. Remus understands perfectly well. He's not sure he could say it out loud either, let alone kill one of his oldest friends even if Peter's plans had succeeded. He's glad it wasn't tested.

"Suppose we let him go," says Remus. "With a strong memory charm, of course; he needs to forget all about Regulus. He'll have nowhere else to go; he'll have to go back to Voldemort. But he'll be useless as a spy."

Oh, god, thinks Remus. All the things that could go wrong. To start with, he wouldn't trust any of his memory charms to persist under Voldemort's scrutiny.

"You mean, he has to try and stay in Voldemort's good graces by his wits and magical prowess alone?" says Sirius. He laughs. "He'll be dead in three months."

 _Might be kinder to kill him ourselves_ , thinks Remus. But he also thinks of the perfect silent Killing Curse Peter has demonstrated, how he has very nearly brought all of them down, how he has played them like pawns in a giant chess match, and shudders. "Don't go underestimating him now," he says. "I listened to him. I –"

"Tell me," says Sirius softly.

Remus is vaguely aware he's wringing his hands, and instinctively thinks _No_. It's enough to have stared into that abyss once today.

"Veritaserum," he says after a while. "A funny old thing. It finds truths where there are none. Convictions, false conclusions, misunderstandings. Repeat a lie enough and it turns into truth, and Peter repeated his lies a lot, was trapped in them and he shifted and chose and arranged them until they made _sense_. I know why he did it. I know where we went wrong. And yet -"

He knows why Peter hates Sirius, the way Remus never could. He hates feeling that maybe he should, too. Peter had been as much of a bystander to The Prank as Remus, neither of them had heard the full story until the next day. How, then, can Remus's reaction be completely right, and Peter's completely wrong? Maybe they're both half wrong. Maybe they're both half right. If Peter should have hated Sirius less, maybe Remus should have hated Sirius more.

This is seriously fucking with his head.

Maybe Sirius has thought about this more than he lets on, because he says, "We were kids. Kids are horrible to each other."

"We still are," says Remus. "You saw how fast it turns sour when you let it." Sirius has the decency to look slightly ashamed at this.

"Peter…" Remus continues, "Peter just had one hell of a head start."

The words sound almost logical when they leave his mouth, he thinks. Like he's already distilled the jumbled mess he's witnessed from Peter into something palatable. Into a lesson they can learn from. But no, he's just picked a handful of things that sort of fit together and ignored the rest, because the truth is, he doesn't understand this. Any of it.

Because no matter how sour this has turned for them – no matter how much he's wanted Sirius to piss off with his understated accusations and his needless paranoia and his pathetic remnants of teenage _love_ , no matter how much he's wanted to be left alone until the end of his numbered, miserable days – today he's seen Peter fire a Killing curse at Sirius bloody Black, and Remus's first instinct has been to get right into the middle of that.

That must say something about him. Other than the fact he's a moron.

Remus wants to say something, wants to explain that he's lying, like a teacher does, he simplifies and omits until the truth is but a lie, because a child might not understand quantum mechanics but they will grasp Newton's first law. And this is not even Newton's first law, it's just an apple that once fell on Peter's head. But a look at Sirius's face tells him it's unnecessary, that Sirius is already as flummoxed as he is.

He still doesn't know how to feel about any of this, but suddenly he realises he'd quite like Sirius's perspective. Maybe that'll help. It used to, before.

That's why he turns Sirius's earlier question around on him and asks, "How are _you_ feeling?"

"I seriously don't know." Sirius makes a helpless gesture with one hand that would have been one hell of a lot more expansive, had he not been holding a still squirming Harry. "Many different things. All at once. I don't even feel like I can give any of these things the appropriate… attention right now, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

The apology hangs between them like a delicate flower. Remus considers it wearily. He doesn't often get apologies from Sirius, and he's not quite sure what to do with this one. There was a time when he would have taken what he could get. Not now.

"Did you really say all these things?" says Remus. "To Peter, I mean. That I have no reason to be fighting for the Order. That you tested me. That you _pity_ me."

Sirius's face twists into a grimace. "It all sounded so much worse when Peter said it," he says. "He made it sound like - like I was terrible. That you were terrible. That's not what I meant –"

"Oh, you should have heard what he had to say about you," says Remus lightly. " _Overbred lunatic_ was one of his kinder expressions."

Sirius snorts. "Well, he's not entirely –"

"But you said these things," says Remus.

The deceptive early morning calm hangs around them for a long while, interrupted only by Harry's baby noises. "Yes," says Sirius finally.

Remus lets him hang in that limbo for a short little while, but, biggest jerk in the universe or not, he supposes Sirius has a right to know. "Peter fabricated the evidence," Remus says eventually. "I never even knew there was any. I thought you were just being an arse for no other reason than –"

"Other than what?"

"I don't know," says Remus sharply. "What reason does Sirius Black need for anything, except the sky is blue and I'm a Werewolf?"

He is surprised, as he always is, when he finds sharp edges from where The Prank has shattered him. He's thought they have all been smoothed over by now, evened out by the tides of so many moons.

Reliably, Sirius's bouts of self-deprecation never last very long. "I'm not sixteen anymore," he states calmly. "What, did you think I was just going to abandon you without at least some semblance of a reason?"

"You're saying you occasionally try and meet the barest minimum of human decency now?" says Remus.

"No," says Sirius. "No, that's not what I'm saying!"

"What _are_ you saying?" says Remus.

"What I'm saying," says Sirius, "is _I'm sorry_. I should have trusted you."

It is the second sorry in the span of about ten minutes, and Remus still doesn't know what exactly to do about it.

Maybe meet it halfway.

"I should have been more trustworthy," he says. He's talking to the shrubbery again, but he guesses it's a start.

"It's not your fault–" starts Sirius.

"We knew there was a spy in the Order," says Remus. "James chose to ignore it, because he thought distrust would paralyse the Order, and he was quite right about that. You became fixated on one lead, but at least you were willing to face the situation at all. And I? I trusted no-one. I lied to you more times than I want to admit. I isolated myself from everyone and pretended the Order is more important than the dents in our friendships. But that's what it is, isn't it? That's what the Order is, and that's what we're protecting. People."

"You're being too kind to me," says Sirius.

"Trust me," says Remus, "I'm not. I haven't been kind to anyone in an eternity. Sort of miss it."

" _Willing to face the situation_ ," quotes Sirius with all the contempt he occasionally has for himself. "I was a _drama queen_. I wasn't content with being betrayed by some random Order backbencher. No, for me, it had to extraordinary. It had to be someone close to my heart."

He pauses, and, rarely for him, re-examines his words.

"And look at me," he says, "now I'm twisting this into a bloody compliment. Mother would be so proud. So here's the truth: I did what I thought was right, and I hated it all the way. I was wrong, and I still hate it. I'm sorry."

Remus tries to think of something to say, of something to refute this – but in the end, he just nods. He wants to give Sirius the benefit of the doubt, wonders how it would have been with the roles reversed, if Sirius had been the one to whom all the evidence had pointed – but right now he's bone-tired.

Instead, he asks a question Sirius would never have answered twenty-four hours ago. "Where's your brother now?"

"Safe," says Sirius without hesitation. "At Hogwarts. Dumbledore sends his regards, by the way."

"What did he have to say about the entire –" Remus flails – " _Peter_ situation?"

"Nothing much," says Sirius. "The usual welcoming feast type speech. Those who are closest to us can hurt us the most, nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak. It sounded impressive and sort of soothing. But you should have heard him talk about Horcruxes with Regulus."

"Horc – what," says Remus.

"Long story," says Sirius. "Literally long story, they talked for hours. I'm saving it for when we are all a bit more awake. Suffice to say Dumbles looked like it's Christmas."

For the first time in ages, Remus almost laughs. "Dumbledore always looks like it's Christmas," he says. "Largely because Dumbledore looks like Santa."

"Well, this Santa wants Regulus to go back to Voldemort," says Sirius.

His light tone is betraying nothing, but Remus has known this man for a long time and can pinpoint exactly how he'd react to a proposition like this.

"Let me guess," says Remus. "The china?"

"The teapot and two saucers found an unfortunate end," says Sirius with a shrug. "Regulus made me stop, I don't think he likes loud noises."

"Yes," says Remus. "I don't think he ever made a very good Death Eater."

Sirius laughs softly at that. "True," he says.

"Why does Dumbledore want him to go back?"

"Oh, many reasons," says Sirius. "The other Horcruxes he's discovered are in the possession of Death Eaters, and it will be infinitely easier –" Sirius rubs his eyes. "Bollocks, I'm sounding like Dumbledore now. Anyway, I told him to shove it, I think he just likes the idea of having another spy among the Death Eaters."

"And Regulus?"

"Said he'll think about it." His mouth quirks. "I could tell he wasn't a big fan of the idea. He looked at me like, _why_ did we put this guy in charge?"

"We're all so willing to put ourselves in danger," Remus reminds him. "We need someone who has no problem sending others."

"Well, _I_ have a problem sending him," says Sirius sharply.

Harry has been good-natured so far, but now he starts crying. Sirius makes noises at him, the absent-mindedness of which only seem to offend Harry further. He makes him fly like an – like an aeroplane, Remus wants to think, but of course not, like a flying motorbike. But that doesn't calm him down, either. To be fair, Sirius doesn't seem too fazed.

"Did you really tell James I'd be a shit godfather?" says Sirius, raising his voice over Harry's cries.

Remus closes his eyes. _Shame about the baby, though_ , he thinks, Peter's words etched into his mind, traces of acid he'll never get rid of now. He'd said them like an afterthought, like Peter hadn't plotted to hand this tiny sniffling baby over to Voldemort.

In sum, shit godfathers have never been the issue here.

"You were a shit boyfriend and I projected," Remus says. "Tell you what. I'll take it back if you figure out what his problem is in the next minute."

"Deal," says Sirius, as Harry turns it up a notch.

"There's literally about three things that could be wrong with him," Sirius informs him, seemingly undisturbed by the crying, rocking Harry without effect. "He's hungry, he needs a nappy change, he wants to make some noise. This stuff isn't hard. I'll just pop inside and -"

He turns, but there is Lily already, standing in the patio door. They haven't even heard her come out.

"This stuff _is_ hard, you pillock," she says. "Give him to me, it's time for elevenses."

Lily is still in yesterday's things, her copper hair in a hasty bun on top of her head, her face bearing the imprint of a sofa cushion. She shivers visibly when she steps out on the patio in socked feet, and draws her powder blue shawl tighter around herself.

"Elevenses?" asks Remus with a meaningful look at the just-rising sun.

"He takes it early," says Lily. She holds out her arms, and Sirius passes her Harry, whose crying changes from pissed-off to goal-oriented. He immediately starts pawing at her blouse.

"I guess that answers that question," says Sirius.

"Doesn't count," Remus says.

Then Lily just looks at the two of them, with heavy-lidded eyes, swaying like a water plant in a slow, twisty current. "Oh, you idiots," she says.

Without another word, she steps forward to give Sirius a very solemn one-harmed hug and a kiss on the cheek, and for a moment, he doesn't let her go. "Thank you," he says into her hair.

"What for?" she says. Clearly, her plan has been to replace talking with hugging at this ungodly hour.

"For letting him in," says Sirius simply, and he leans down, cups her face in his hands and presses his lips gently to her forehead. Lily accepts it gracefully.

Then Lily turns to Remus, gets up on her tip-toes and gives him a hug and a kiss, too, and he he's surprised how much he relishes the touch, something long-forgotten, her sleep-heavy body in his arms, the warmth she's radiating, even if his injured body protests against the pressure. His body, after all, is stupid. The meaning of this all is clear: Shared horror at the shadowy fate waiting for them, shared relief at their improbable escape.

Harry, of course, is the only one not acknowledging the gravity of the situation. But he will, in time, thinks Remus. Lily turns without another word and steps back through the patio door into the living room.

They're alone, then, without even the admittedly cute but not particularly eloquent Harry between them, and suddenly everything seems harder. Remus takes advantage of the lack of minors in the vicinity and lights another cigarette, and he offers one to Sirius without asking.

Sirius accepts it. That, at least, is something they still have in common.

Slowly killing themselves with cigarettes. An excellent start.

"I thought more things would change," Sirius says finally, watching the smoke twirl and combine in the frigid morning air. "Today was extraordinary, I thought it must change everything. And yet – we're talking about letting Peter walk. We're talking about sending my brother back."

"We're talking," Remus points out.

Sirius regards him with a guarded expression. "Yes," he says. "That."

"You can't know what has changed," says Remus. "We dodged a bullet. We somehow avoided a tragedy, and we don't even know the shape of it."

"Yes, we do," says Sirius. "James and Lily and Harry."

 _And you, and me_ , Remus doesn't add. _That monstrous fool, that careless monster_. The memory of Peter's litany is still too fresh in his mind. He knows exactly what sort of fate would have awaited them. Remus put down like an animal, beheaded by Macnair's silver axe, or else enslaved by Fenrir Greyback, serving Voldemort whether he liked it or not. Sirius shut away somewhere, insignificant, powerless, suspended an inch away from death, trapped inside Azkaban or Grimmauld Place or a neverending Imperius.

And Regulus, dead on the Potters' kitchen floor, his body unmarred except for the scars he brought, and his secrets gone with him.

Sirius looks down at the cigarette in his hands, and suddenly sleepless nights and adrenaline and dodged bullets seem to catch up with him. "Oh god," he says. "What if –"

And Remus steps forward, he can't not, Lily started the hugging and now it's on them to finish it.

He goes into it expecting pain, of all things, but of course Sirius has paid attention, and stays clear of his bruised left side, of his torn-up neck and back. Everywhere else, he holds on tight.

"What-ifs have no place here," Remus says. "No more. No what-ifs, no doubts, no silence, no _lies_ -" and Sirius has his head on Remus's shoulder, breath close to his ear, and at least one of them is crying, the shivers reverberating through his chest and his thoughts.

They dodged a bullet, Remus reminds himself. Then why does it feel like they stepped right into its path? Like everything they have been, everything they thought they have been, everything they could be, has toppled over and been replaced with a mad sort of new reality?

He notices, acutely, that Sirius's hand is hovering over where he knows Remus is hurt.

"Do you want to talk about it?" says Sirius. "About what happened to you in the forest."

This is usually Remus's line, or used to be, in that weird bygone age. _Not today_ , thinks Remus, not today and not tomorrow and preferably not before all those bones in the forest have become dust. But maybe he can talk about something sufficiently like it. Things want out, it seems to be that sort of day.

He realises he's holding his breath, and exhales, quite deliberately. "I almost didn't come back," he says.

He half expects a needling, paranoid question, but Sirius might just understand now. "Peter intercepted your messages, didn't he," he says.

"I thought the Order had abandoned me," says Remus. "I thought they were okay with me dying in a forest somewhere. All those people who died, _they_ trusted me, but the Order never -" He laughs softly, it's either that or crying again.

Sirius's hand is on the back of his head now, a warm and almost comforting presence.

"I'd have been there," he says. "If I'd known you were in danger. You know that, right? No matter what, I'd have been there."

It's such a _Sirius_ thing to say. Of course, it's also such a Sirius thing to do. Maybe it's a blessing it wasn't tested.

"I thought you'd reached your breaking point," says Remus. "No, don't argue. There _is_ a breaking point, for all of us. I know it, I was there. I thought I was done after Christmas. Done with the fucking Order, I mean. I thought I should just vanish off the edge of society. Take myself off your paranoid hands." He draws a shuddering breath. "See, you were right after all."

"Bullshit," says Sirius, as eloquent as ever. "You came back," he points out.

"I hate self-fulfilling prophecies," says Remus, and wonders if Sirius has any idea how lonely it is in the frigid forests of Wales, when everyone else is gone. "Anyway, the rent on my place was paid through January and I was starting to miss sleeping in a real bed."

Sirius snorts. "I'm not sure that stupid mattress qualifies."

"Oh, you should be so lucky," grumbles Remus, but Sirius hears it, and laughs, a little, and Remus thinks Sirius knows exactly how lucky he is if he gets to share that back-breaking mattress ever again. Or maybe it's not laughter.

It's not entirely clear what anything is, today.

"This fucking war," says Sirius thickly. "I'm sick of it."

They break the embrace, but only a little, they're still breathing each other's air, close enough to kiss, or, say, have a hushed conversation. Because that kissing lark will obviously have to wait.

"What did you think of?" Remus says, grasping a sudden impulse by the throat. "When you summoned the Patronus last night."

"Why are you asking?" says Sirius, and belatedly, Remus tries to think of a reason, anything, except he's always been hopeless at Patronuses, because he doesn't get them. And if anyone shouldn't be able to get them, it's Sirius, with his haunted house of memories.

"It's like the war has tainted them," says Remus. "My memories. Like they're insignificant next to the war. Especially now, it's like, all this time, I was _missing_ something, ignoring something… like my memories _should_ be unhappy…"

Sirius lays a hesitant finger on his lips before Remus can let his brainstorming coalesce into a new truth about himself. _Leave them alone_ , it says. _You'll need them later_.

"Today, my brother returned from the dead," says Sirius simply. "And he was standing right in front of me. At that moment, I wasn't thinking what it meant. I wasn't thinking he might be an impostor, or a liar. I grabbed that feeling and didn't let go. The Patronus just… came into existence, because it recognised him. I don't think I even tried to summon it."

His smile his fleeting, but it's there, and it's something Remus hasn't seen in too long: Happiness.

This is the smile he wants to make happen again. He used to be able to, in the past.

"Could you do it again?" says Remus.

Sirius is confused. "Can I summon a Patronus?"

"Can you _not think_?" says Remus. "Can you grab a feeling and not let go?"

"Ah," says Sirius. "Yes. Probably my best thing. You know, before all… this."

Remus nods, slowly and purposefully. "I'm tired of wasting time," he says. "Last time, I took six months to forgive you. Thinking and thinking and thinking. At this rate, we might be dead before we're fine."

At this, Sirius steps back, creating some actual, if minuscule distance between him, but watching him curiously.

Of course, most of Remus's deliberation is going on inside, and it goes as follows: He's tired of being played like a puppet, or a pawn. He's not going to let Peter win this one.

"Where are you going with this?" asks Sirius.

" _Home_ ," says Remus. "I'm going home. I'm tired, and I need to sleep."

He almost doesn't say it. But fuck him, he's a Gryffindor, for better or worse. And that is why Remus, after much consideration, adds, "Are you coming?"

As if to underline his words, he steps forward, closes that tiny gap that separates them, and Sirius's arms encircle him again, solid and warm and smelling of leather and cigarettes, and he feels, rather than sees, Sirius's slow nod. "If you'll have me," he says.

"I'm only asking this once," says Remus.

At this, there is laughter. "Come on, then," says Sirius. "I'm taking you home."

* * *

 _The End._


End file.
